Spectrum audit legislation will be a high priority for the House and Senate Commerce Committees when Congress reconvenes next year, industry and Hill sources said. Work likely will start in the House Communications Subcommittee with markup of two bills that address the scope of a spectrum inventory (HR-3125), and strategy for relocating holders of federal agency spectrum, freeing it for commercial use (HR- 3019). The Senate Communications Subcommittee also has an audit bill (S-649). Negotiations are ongoing among congressional staff and the administration on a comprehensive approach, industry sources said. There’s strong bipartisan support for an inventory bill.
FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker wants a spectrum policy plan that’s not just a “subset” of the National Broadband Plan, she said at a Phoenix Center event Thursday. The “cross-governmental long-term strategic framework” on spectrum “should be one of our major efforts of 2010 and should chart the government’s course well into the decade,” she said. The plan would include a spectrum inventory and a review of secondary market rules, she said. “By taking full stock of our spectrum resources and how they are being used, and adapting secondary market and service rules to the changed conditions and technologies we have today, I think we can make great strides to help ensure that the U.S. consumers are the beneficiaries of a world-class mobile broadband infrastructure.”
Any action the FCC takes on the Universal Service Fund “will be very cognizant of consumers and will be focused on looking at ways to break savings out of the system, so the impact on consumers can be lessened if at all possible,” Chairman Julius Genachowski told reporters after an FCC meeting Wednesday. A Wall Street Journal article that morning said the FCC was thinking about hiking consumer USF fees and imposing open-access policies. Also, Genachowski said a controversial Harvard University study on broadband should have equal weight with other information in the record.
CHICAGO - Network neutrality rules could slow or “halt” progress toward a fully connected world, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said in a keynote speech Wednesday at Supercomm. “While this future is imminent, it is not inevitable, and the decisions we make today - as an industry and as a country - will determine whether the benefits of these transformational networks will be felt sooner or much, much later.”
CHICAGO - Network neutrality rules could slow or “halt” progress toward a fully connected world, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said in a keynote speech Wednesday at Supercomm. “While this future is imminent, it is not inevitable, and the decisions we make today - as an industry and as a country - will determine whether the benefits of these transformational networks will be felt sooner or much, much later.”
Judges seemed skeptical of Rural Cellular Association arguments that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit should throw out the FCC’s interim cap on universal service payments to competitive eligible telecommunications carriers (CETCs), imposed in May 2008. RCA attorney David LaFuria told judges during oral argument Monday that the commission had imposed the cap without a factual or logical basis, without showing an emergency requiring bold action.
The FCC’s National Broadband Plan probably will conclude that Americans are getting less broadband than they pay for, judging from hours of presentations Tuesday at the commission’s monthly meeting. Another likely conclusion is that universal broadband won’t come cheap: The cost could soar to $350 billion, based on commission estimates.
The FCC’s National Broadband Plan probably will conclude that Americans are getting less broadband than they pay for, judging from hours of presentations Tuesday at the commission’s monthly meeting. Another likely conclusion is that universal broadband won’t come cheap: The cost could soar to $350 billion, based on commission estimates.
FCC and Hill policymakers should consider the role private investment plays in broadband penetration as work goes forward on a national plan, analysts said at an American Consumer Institute (ACI) seminar Tuesday. The plan needs to weigh how public policy goals of increasing broadband speed and access are tied to industry’s financial underpinnings, said panelists. “Much of the debate at the FCC so far has been very general … there have been no big ideas,” said Larry Darby of ACI, a non-profit that supports research into market solutions when analyzing consumer issues.
FCC and Hill policymakers should consider the role private investment plays in broadband penetration as work goes forward on a national plan, analysts said at an American Consumer Institute (ACI) seminar Tuesday. The plan needs to weigh how public policy goals of increasing broadband speed and access are tied to industry’s financial underpinnings, said panelists. “Much of the debate at the FCC so far has been very general … there have been no big ideas,” said Larry Darby of ACI, a non-profit that supports research into market solutions when analyzing consumer issues. “We need to be careful about thinking of broadband in an isolated context,” said Timothy Horan, telecom analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. “From USF to voice, frankly it’s based on what networks looked like 60 years ago.” Tax incentives for broadband should be considered as the government weighs moving forward with a national broadband policy plan, said Debbie Goldman, telecom policy director of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). While supportive of the $7.2 billion in spending for broadband grants and loans, Goldman said she’s worried about how that investment will play out, whether it will lead to new jobs or just the hiring of temporary workers, and whether the projects will add to meeting long-term goals for higher speeds and greater access. CWA believes every $5 billion invested in broadband infrastructure would create 97,500 new jobs in the telecom and IT industries. Additional direct government spending on broadband isn’t likely, said Anna-Maria Kovacs, a telecom analyst who said she doesn’t invest personally in the companies she studies. “The $7.2 billion is pretty much all of the investment we're going to see. The rest must come from the private sector,” Kovacs said. For that to happen, investors will need to feel confident that they can recoup on investments. What makes investors nervous is uncertainty about regulation, she said.