WASHINGTON-Top wireless broadband licensees are at odds with schools and churches over whether federal regulators should mandate a 15-year cap on education spectrum leases, a feud that could force Bush administration telecom officials to choose between two highly popular and politically connected interest groups.
“A 15-year term is too short to allow an adequate return on the multibillion-dollar investment needed to fully develop the 2.5 GHz band, and adopting a 15-year EBS [education broadband service] lease term limit will have the result of driving investment to other spectrum bands. And that, in turn, will deny educators the benefits that accrue from a vibrant market for leased EBS spectrum,” the Wireless Communications Association stated in a Feb. 17 letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin.
Attached to the letter was a newly published study supporting WCA’s position.
“Applying the 15-year lease limit to EBS licenses is not in the public interest and threatens the efficient use of that band,” stated the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.
The Phoenix Center said a lease cap would be counter to secondary-market rules championed by the FCC to promote efficient spectrum use in the wireless industry. Sprint Nextel Corp., BellSouth Corp. and others have joined WCA in urging telecom regulators to avoid setting artificial lease terms on educational broadband frequencies.
“Licensees in the EBS band are nonprofit entities who are to use the spectrum for educational and cultural purposes, and the commission envisions that private-sector leases of this spectrum will help these entities construct new and innovative educational networks,” the Phoenix Center stated. “Further, we find no evidence of market failure or defect that justifies regulatory intervention. Intervention, by nearly any theory of regulation, is justified only when there is some market defect rendering private agreements incapable of reaching an efficient solution.”
WCA said it offers general financial support to the Phoenix Center. However, the nonprofit think tank said it does not accept targeted funding for research, and maintains full editorial control of its products.
Because the United States lags behind other nations in broadband penetration and President Bush has called for universal, affordable broadband service by 2007, WCA’s arguments should carry weight at the FCC.
But for the most part, schools and churches favor the 15-year limit. As such, the Republican-controlled FCC is not apt to brush aside arguments for a maximum 15-year term on EBS spectrum leases.
The Catholic Television Network and the National ITFS Association said such a rule is consistent with the FCC goal of facilitating traditional educational applications in the 2.5 GHz band.
“NIA and CTN continue to believe that the 15-year limit clearly furthers the educational purposes of EBS by, among other things, ensuring an opportunity for educators to re-evaluate changing educational needs, spectrum requirements and technologies on a periodic basis, and that the limit can only be modified if the FCC can assure that these educational needs are met in some other manner,” the two groups told the FCC.
