Overdue AWS spectrum relocation report sent to Congress

The Bush administration sent Congress a long-overdue report that is key to the deployment of spectrum licenses that bidders paid $13.7 billion for during last year’s auction.
Mobile phone carriers and lawmakers had been pressing the Office of Management and Budget to deliver to Congress a report detailing how $936 million from the advanced wireless services (AWS) auction would be used to relocate defense and other government users from the 1710-1755 MHz spectrum band-one of two AWS spectrum blocks-to other frequencies.
The 2004 law guaranteeing federal agencies reimbursement (via transfer of some AWS auction monies to a fund) requires the OMB, in consultation with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, to report to Congress on relocation costs and timelines.
The relocation funds cannot be distributed to federal agencies until 30 days after the OMB director submits the report to key committees, so long as Congress has no objections. Industry expected the report to be delivered to Congress in October. The OMB finally submitted the report to Capitol Hill on Friday, according to government and industry sources.
“The sooner the relocation process gets underway, the sooner the 104 companies that won licenses in the FCC auction can deploy new broadband wireless services,” a bipartisan group of senators wrote Michael Bopp, the OMB associate director for general government programs, in late January.