Guthrie Wants FCC Spectrum Auction Pipeline to Raise $88 Billion
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is marking up its contribution to a budget package on Tuesday.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, May 12, 2024 – A House budget bill needs to find a big pot of revenue, and it looks like Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will be handed the job.
Under a budget plan unveiled Sunday night, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said he wants the FCC to raise $88 billion over the next nine years by auctioning off at least 600 megahertz of spectrum.
Guthrie’s plan appeared to hand a major political victory for the big mobile carriers – AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile – that want to perpetuate a licensed spectrum regime. Comcast and Charter – which favor an unlicensed spectrum scheme with sharing attributes – likely need to find support for their approach in the Senate. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to mark up the draft language on Tuesday.
Guthrie’s bill called for auctioning spectrum for use “on an exclusive, licensed basis for mobile broadband services, fixed broadband services, mobile and fixed broadband services, or a combination thereof.” Satellite providers were not mentioned.
The FCC’s ability to auction off spectrum expired in March 2023. The draft language would reinstate the FCC’s auction authority until Sept. 30, 2034.
“We urge Congress to advance this legislation quickly so that America’s wireless providers can put these airwaves to work – creating jobs, growing our economy, fostering competition and innovation across industries, and restoring America’s global leadership in wireless,” CTIA CEO Ajit Pai said in a statement. Pai was FCC Chairman under the first Trump administration and took over at CTIA on April 1.
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., ranking member of the Communications and Tehcnology Subcommittee, blasted the spectrum provision in a statement Monday.
“This hyper-partisan reconciliation bill throws our bipartisan efforts on spectrum auction authority in the trash,” she said. “Instead of directing spectrum auction funds to fund life-saving grants like Next Generation 911 or to make high-speed internet more affordable for American families, Republicans would rather funnel more tax breaks to billionaires.”
The draft legislation would, however, exclude the military’s lower 3 GHz band and the unlicensed 6 GHz band from being auctioned.
The lower 3 GHz band has been eyed by the 5G industry because it has favorable physical characteristics for mobile broadband, but the military has been strongly opposed to the prospect of moving its missile defense systems elsewhere, which it says would be time-consuming and costly. The DoD floated a proposal in March that would have protected the lower 3 GHz and most of the 7 GHz band, but only the former made its way into the House's draft language.
The 6 GHz band was set aside by the Pai FCC for unlicensed users, including devices on the Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 standards. Unlicensed users and spectrum sharing proponents like the cable industry have also opposed a pipeline.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has been the lead advocate for a spectrum pipeline in Congress. The idea has faced opposition from the DoD and allied lawmakers, who have cited national security concerns.
Most recently, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the top Democrat on Cruz’s panel, criticized the DoD plan, and she said she opposed auctioning any military spectrum as part of the reconciliation bill.
“We expect the real battle over what spectrum should be auctioned, if there is one in this legislative effort, to be fought in the Senate,” Blair Levin, policy advisor for New Street Research said in a research note Monday. “The fact that the House is not targeting specific bands suggests to us that it is unlikely the Senate (or the legislation) will end up with more specific language.”
Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future program at New America’s Open Technology Institute, said in an email that it was “highly unusual” to specify uses for the auctioned spectrum in the way the draft language does. He said it could reflect that the mobile carriers increasingly offer fixed wireless broadband on their surplus spectrum, or be an effort to block satellite companies from competing for airwaves in future auctions.
SpaceX has made clear it is interested in acquiring some of the upper C-band, which the 5G industry is also eager to scoop up in a future auction the FCC is currently laying the groundwork for.
