WASHINGTON-After more than seven hours of debate, the House Commerce Committee last week passed a bill to complete the digital TV transition by Dec. 31, 2008, and earmark $500 million for public-safety interoperability.
The vote was 33-17 with Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) being the only Republican to vote against it.
Senators shot down two amendments, one that would have allocated $5.8 billion for public-safety communications and another that would have set aside some spectrum for unlicensed uses.
The Federal Communications Commission is being directed to “avoid excessive concentration” of spectrum, according to a “sense of the Congress” amendment sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.). Eshoo earlier this year called for a set aside similar to the C-block when PCS was auctioned.
The Democrats began the day by offering a substitute amendment that would have used all of the proceeds from the spectrum auction, according to Republican critics.
“The minority substitute takes all of the money from the auction of the spectrum and spends it,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee. “I think we could use some of the auction proceeds for deficit reduction.”
After the Democratic substitute failed, additional efforts by Democrats to use the auction proceeds for the DTV conversion and public-safety communications also failed-leading Democrats to claim the Republicans were imposing a TV tax and harming public safety.
The House Commerce Committee did pass an amendment providing $500 million for public-safety interoperability. This amount is half of what the Senate allocated earlier this month. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee, said he hopes to eventually raise the amount available for public safety.
By sticking to the Dec. 31, 2008, hard date, the House Commerce Committee created a four-month discrepancy between when the House wants to switch to DTV and when the Senate does. The Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month passed a bill setting its date at April 7, 2009. After the hearing, Chairman Barton told reporters that he wanted to stick to the Dec. 31, 2008 date, noting that was the date proposed by the House all along.
The House date does not account for TV sales contemplated in the Senate bill: the holiday gift-giving season, the Super Bowl and the NCAA Basketball Championships.
Congress is considering a hard date for the DTV transition as part of the 2006 budget reconciliation process. In 1997, Congress said that in 2007 broadcasters would have to return the extra 6 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that was given to TV broadcasters to facilitate the DTV transition. But TV broadcasters could keep the spectrum if more than 15 percent of the homes in their viewing areas could not receive digital signals. Removing the caveat has become known as establishing a hard date and has been encouraged widely by the wireless industry, which wants access to some of the spectrum.
The bill also earmarks money for a set-top-box subsidy from auction revenues and designates the National Telecommunications & Information Administration as the lead agency to implement the converter-box subsidy.
