Spectrum War of Words Heats Up Between NAB and CEA, CTIA

The subcommittee will soon mark up a House companion to S-911, which has been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, broadcast and carrier industry officials said. They said the markup, which had been tentatively eyed for some time and then pushed back, could happen as soon as next week. “Members on both sides of the aisle are committed to getting the policy right, which is why we continue to avoid any arbitrary deadlines for action,” Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said Tuesday. His goal is to “advance legislation” this year, he said. His spokesman had no comment Thursday.

Anything from the subcommittee could help guide the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction on what steps to recommend on authorizing the FCC to auction broadcasters’ channels given up voluntarily and share the proceeds with them to use the airwaves for mobile broadband, industry officials said. Walden’s bill could be marked up, and whatever the product of that markup is could be what the House takes to the deficit committee to negotiate against S-911 with, a broadcast official said. A spokesman for the House Commerce Committee’s Republican leader had no comment.

The worry among some spectrum reallocation proponents is the Citigroup study will give pause to some legislators as they consider spectrum legislation, said Chairman Jonathan Spalter of the Mobile Future Coalition. Members are AT&T and T-Mobile, which are seeking to combine, vendors and carriers including Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Qualcomm. “We cannot allow the last set of data to be presented as the definitive and last word on the subject,” Spalter said. Legislators “should not be derailed by relying on analysis and assertions, like NAB has done, that really don’t stand up to scrutiny,” he said.

NAB Wednesday sent a letter to all of the super committee members in which it said the Citigroup report raised serious and legitimate questions about what the CE industry and carriers say is a spectrum shortage (http://xrl.us/bmfh5z). TV stations have “been maligned” by those industries “in their effort to secure additional local TV channels for wireless services,” NAB President Gordon Smith wrote. “But what if the entire predicate for the alleged spectrum crisis is false?” The importance of Citigroup’s findings “cannot be overstated” and “suggests that the ’spectrum crisis’ claims that have been manufactured by the wireless and consumer electronic industries -- and advanced by the FCC -- simply do not withstand scrutiny,” he said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman had no comment.

NAB sought a “fulsome spectrum inventory” by the commission and rhetorically asked the super committee members why one hadn’t been done. “Is there truly a spectrum crisis, or is this an opportunity” for carriers and the CE industry “to gain a competitive advantage in the video distribution marketplace,” Smith asked. “We hope you will take seriously Citigroup’s findings that debunk the notion of a spectrum shortage."

Carriers and the CE industry say NAB is misrepresenting the looming spectrum crunch or that the report isn’t right. The report estimated LTE can contain 8.6 bits per hertz and 3.5G HSPA+ -- between the latest U.S. wireless technology and older 3G systems -- 2.1 bits. That’s “multiples” higher than what a “reasoned analysis” would find, Spalter said. It’s 1.05 bits for HSPA+ download speeds and 1.4 bits for LTE, he said, citing informed engineers. Michael Rollins, the analyst who wrote the report, had no comment. AT&T noted the 400 MHz used by all carriers serve more than 300 million wireless connections, “and that number is growing.” Broadcasters use about 200 MHz to reach fewer than 10 million over-the-air-reliant households, Executive Vice President Tim McKone said. Smith’s letter said 46 million Americans are “exclusively reliant on broadcast TV for their only source of television."

NAB is seeing a “circle-the-wagons” response from spectrum reallocation proponents, an association spokesman said. “Thanks to Citigroup’s findings, the only crisis related to spectrum now seems to be in the executive ranks of our wireless company friends panicking over a possible review of their warehousing of valuable airwaves,” he said. “NAB reiterates our endorsement of voluntary auctions so long as ‘non-volunteer’ stations and the tens of millions of viewers that they serve are not punished."

NAB’s misrepresentations are “becoming more desperate as time goes on,” CTIA Vice President Jot Carpenter said. “The looming spectrum crisis is a fact that has been acknowledged by the president, members of Congress and the FCC Chairman and his colleagues. It has been acknowledged by foreign governments. The only people on the planet who consistently fail to acknowledge its existence work at the NAB.” CEA Senior Vice President Michael Petricone said NAB makes a “fanciful assertion that there is no spectrum crisis,” which “runs contrary to physics and fact.” There’s “no serious debate about this issue,” he said. “Instead of engaging in frenetic attempts to deny the obvious, we urge NAB to work with policymakers and the innovation industry.”