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FCC Postpones Spectrum Auction Until 2016
An anonymous reader writes: 2014 was supposed to be the year broadcasters would be allowed to sell off their unused spectrum to mobile carriers. That got pushed back to 2015 in December, and now the Federal Communications Commission has bumped it to 2016 in the face of a lawsuit from the National Association of Broadcasters. The FCC says the legal briefs aren't even due until January 2015, and it will take them until the middle of the year to review the documents and respond in court. The delay is just fine with the NAB, but probably bad news for anyone hoping that spectrum would help to improve mobile communications in the U.S. any time soon.
I don't get your point. A spectrum auction is where the FCC sells licenses to use bands of spectrum. I don't know where you got the false notion that these companies owned the spectrum itself.
The "spectrum" the Govt wants to auction is "found" by "repacking" the remaining TV over the air broadcasters. Among the great idea are multiple stations using one channel (So we get two crappy streams on one frequency instead of the pretty HDTV we were promised) and other stations going back to VHF-Lo (RF channels 2-5) which don't work all that well without big antennas and have issues with interference and digital. The NAB is unhappy because the "re pack" means that many stations will lose broadcast area. If you are a cable co, or a broadband provider, OF COURSE you will want to do anything you can to cripple the "cut the cord" folks....you can't ban OTA broadcast, but you can cripple it. There is debate as to how much money the broadcasters will get in compensation, but there clearly isn't anyone looking out for the OTA viewer. I like some broadband too but this is the new titan fighting the old titan...
It's revocable monopoly ownership. Once licensed, only violations of the license result in the purchasing entity losing license to that spectrum. For the rest, the purchasing entity owns the spectrum and can do with it what they want, within terms of the license. At least that's how I understand it. Maybe the new licenses are worded differently, but that's how the old ones effectively were written.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Yes, they possess the license to exclusively use the spectrum. This sale was about broadcasters selling rights to use the unused parts of their licensed spectrum.
The licenses are transferable, and give the right to use the spectrum. How is that different than the spectrum itself? It's a fiction so of course it's a license and not the 'physical' aether.
The problem for me is, instead of a lease going back to the state, which then leases the spectrum to someone else... some firm profits handsomely from selling a license for a fictional monopoly on a common good. That's kinda fucked.
I absolutely understand the need for licensing, else there would be mayhem. But it could be done in a better way. I guess it's the same idea as $1M taxi medallions. Those should be leased and non-transferable too.
Sent from my PDP-11
Which re-begs the question of why licensees should be allowed to resell the spectrum at all. As the OP asked, why shouldn't licensees return unused spectrum to the actual owners, us, and we can have our representatives, the government, re-license it and pocket the money. Why are licensees profiting in a secondary market for public resources?
The smaller Low power stations will likely lose their license or be forced to move to another frequency with no financial compensation. As far as the Low Power stations are concerned this auction is a very bad idea.
Its the LP stations that provide minority content.
The LP I engineer for provides Spanish and Haitian content to our communities, many LP stations around the country provide similar content.
As for cell phone users this is not that much spectrum and will make little difference.
This is just a big land grab by the big cell phone carriers, welcome to the 19th century.