TV Incentive Auction Isn’t ‘Train Wreck,’ Clyburn Says
The TV incentive auction is “absolutely not a train wreck,” said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday during an event on the Future of Mobile, sponsored by AT&T, Politico and TechNet. Clyburn also said she welcomes IP transition experiments in places like Carbon Hill, Alabama (http://soc.att.com/1yRbmYy).
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The incentive auction, expected to get underway next year, is “an opportunity to make efficient both the broadcast space and the wireless space,” Clyburn said. But she also said the FCC must be “vigilant.” The agency is “in the spectrum-enabling business,” she said. “We are repurposing. We are teeing up auctions.” Clyburn said the world is becoming “platform agnostic” and that requires more spectrum for broadband.
The FCC is engaging with broadcasters and other stakeholders to say “this is what we anticipate all of this looking like,” Clyburn said, saying broadcasters don’t have to sell all of their spectrum. They can work out a channel sharing arrangement, get a capital infusion and remain on the air, she said. “This I think is an opportunity that is unique.”
Clyburn also said she’s “not scared” of some of the IP transition experiments getting underway. “I am not afraid of saying, let’s try this,” she said. “Honestly, some of the legacy systems have not worked for all.” It’s important to examine the effect on big cities and small towns, and “dexterity” is critical, Clyburn said. The transition will look “different in every hamlet,” she said.
The public reaction to the FCC proposed net neutrality rules, approved at the commission’s May 15 open meeting (CD May 16 p1), show the effect of the Internet and social media, Clyburn said. There is “awareness like never before,” she said. The FCC heard “loud and clear” public concern about the Internet remaining “an open platform,” she said. Clyburn said she continues to believe that wireless should be treated the same as wireline under the rules.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Congress can’t keep up with changing technology: “As technology speeds up, we don’t.” Lofgren said she heads home to her district in the Silicon Valley every week. “Mostly members of the House and Senate go to the valley to fund raise,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they have any idea of what’s going on with the tech world.” Members don’t need to understand all technology to make good decisions, she said. But if they don’t understand anything, “you're apt to make a mistake, so we do have our work cut out for us,” she said.
Many members of Congress are scared about changes in technology, said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “They don’t understand it,” he said. “It jumps up and bites them.” Whenever Congress takes up complicated legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Protect IP Act (PIPA), it needs the insights of “nerds and geeks,” he said. “You're going to perform surgery on the Internet and there’s not a doctor in the room.” Much of Congress is staffed by people in their 20’s and “that’s a good thing” when it comes to technology, Chaffetz said. “We'll hopefully not screw it up for you.”
Lofgren said she’s concerned about industry consolidation. If a company controls the market completely, it can “squash” newcomers and innovators, she said. But antitrust enforcement is a “very bulky tool,” she said. “If we allow actions that destroy startups, then we're really crippling our future.” Chaffetz said he’s less concerned about deals. “It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow,” he said. Both lawmakers are members of the Judiciary Committee.
Lofgren and Chaffetz said spectrum will be a huge issue going forward. Chaffetz said the U.S. Navy still controls big swaths of spectrum in Kansas. “We're going to have to open up that spectrum,” he said. Technology can help, Lofgren said. As industry moves to much more dynamic use of spectrum “you might not have a regulatory scheme at all,” she said. “We want to make sure that we don’t squash that.”
Dedicated spectrum is “absolutely critical” for all types of products, from tablets to ultra-mobile laptops to embedded processors inside dashboards, said Peter Cleveland, director-global public policy at Intel. Members of Congress and the administration are “headed into the right direction” though getting more spectrum online for broadband is taking a long time, he said. He said the government “sits on” 50-60 percent “of the most fertile spectrum.” Ten years from now, no one will even use the word “mobile,” it will be so ingrained in everything, said Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future. He said lawmakers and regulators need to be as “innovative, as flexible, as quick” as industry is in developing new products and services.