NAB, CTIA, CEA spar over incentive auctions

A year after the Federal Communications Commission presented its National Broadband Plan to Congress, broadcast incentive auctions seem to be the major contentious point of the plan to date. CTIA and the Consumers Electronics Association wrote their first-ever co-signed letter to Congress today, urging legislators to ignore what they call the broadcast industry’s “desperate attempt … to deflect attention from the looming national spectrum crisis.”
Speaking at Mobile Future Forum yesterday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski defended the agency’s plan to conduct voluntary incentive spectrum auctions and denied that cable and wireless companies are hoarding spectrum. The speech was cheered by CTIA and rebutted by the National Association of Broadcasters, which again called for an independent assessment of whether the United States is facing a spectrum crunch.
In Genachowski’s mind, there is no doubt of a spectrum crisis ahead. “The hunger for mobility is even greater than many imagined a year ago, because even 3G wireless services can deliver speeds capable of handling a dramatically wide array of consumer applications, from entertainment, to education, to health care,” Genachowsi said. “When the National Broadband Plan was released a year ago, there was essentially no commercial market for tablets. In 2011, global tablet sales are projected to top 55 million. … The bottom line: mobile broadband is being adopted faster than any computing platform in history. The number of smart phones and tablets being sold now exceeds the number of PCs. … This explosion in demand for spectrum is putting strain on the limited supply available for mobile broadband, leading to a spectrum crunch.”
While Genachowski gave a shout out to broadcasters, saying they provide important and valuable programming, CTIA and CEA were not as kind.
“If NAB would like to have a discussion about warehousing spectrum, it should first look inward. Not only do broadcasters have a significant amount of spectrum that goes unused in each market, even when used, fewer than 10% of Americans rely on over-the-air broadcasting. Compare that to the more than 300 million wireless customers in the United States and their ever-increasing use of mobile broadband.”
For his part, Genachowski said there is no evidence of spectrum hoarding. “It is not hoarding if a company paid millions or billions of dollars for spectrum at auction and is complying with the FCC’s buildout rules. There is no evidence of non-compliance.”