NAB’s Smith Says TWC Comments Show It’s ‘Warehousing Spectrum’
A Time Warner Cable executive’s comments show the company is “warehousing spectrum” that could be used to build out Internet service to underserved markets, NAB President Gordon Smith wrote the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Commerce committees. Statements by Time Warner Cable Chief Operating Officer Rob Marcus on a conference call last week to discuss Q4 results (CD Jan 29 p7) amounted to a “surprising admission,” Smith wrote. It comes “at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless carriers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed,” he wrote in a letter Friday. Hours after the NAB released the document Monday, CTIA criticized it as “baffling.” The wireless and broadcast industries have been at odds over whether a spectrum shortage is approaching.
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"If there truly is a ’spectrum crisis,’ then allowing companies the size of Time Warner [Cable] to hoard airwaves should not be allowed,” Smith wrote Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and their counterparts in the House, Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Smith sought a “full and accurate accounting” of spectrum users and “warehousers” through passage of spectrum inventory legislation. Broadcasters continue to want to work with Congress, the White House and FCC to “find real solutions to the alleged spectrum shortages facing” the U.S., Smith said (http://xrl.us/bigqy2).
At issue for the NAB are comments by Marcus, in response to an analyst’s question, that Time Warner Cable has no plans to sell, lease or use its advanced wireless spectrum licenses. “We're always keeping our eye on what the market for spectrum is, and I would note the recent AT&T acquisition of the MediaFlo spectrum” for mobile video from Qualcomm, at around 80 cents per megahertz POP, “is a pretty healthy number and certainly, more than what we paid for the AWS spectrum,” Marcus said. “I would concede it’s not exactly comparable spectrum, but I think it certainly bodes well for the value of what we're holding.” SpectrumCo, made up of Sprint Nextel and major cable operators, won $2.38 billion of AWS spectrum in auction 66. Time Warner Cable owned 29 percent of SpectrumCo, FCC records from the 2006 auction show. Time Warner Cable spokesmen didn’t reply right away to a message seeking comment. A transcript of the Q-and-A is at http://xrl.us/bigq2b.
"It’s baffling that the NAB chooses to challenge a voluntary incentive spectrum auction,” CTIA President Steve Largent said Monday. “To continue to meet the demands of the almost 293 million U.S. wireless consumers for everything from voice to data to Internet access, we must get more spectrum,” and that’s “why policymakers have been such great advocates for our industry on this issue,” he said. “We look forward to continuing to work with all parties to identify unused spectrum so our members can purchase and use it to expand wireless broadband to all.”