With a recent Senate hearing and a new bill released by Sen. Ted Stevens (R - Alaska), the FCC may have a new incentive to act on the issue of phantom traffic. To talk about the issue and what the recent Congressional action might mean at the FCC, we sat down recently with USTelecom’s Glenn Reynolds, VP for policy, and Bill Deere, VP for Government Affairs.
In testimony before the House Telecom Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, USTelecom President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr. urged Congress to take the time to gather the facts on broadband deployment before enacting premature legislation that could impede investment and innovation in broadband that helps protect the environment and delivers better health care and education services to consumers. Hear the testimony; read the news release or listen to the testimony.
Patrick Brogan discusses the FCC Broadband Data.
Last week, the FCC held its monthly Open Meeting, and telecom issues were front and center. We sat down with USTelecom Senior Vice President Jon Banks to talk about what happened at the meeting.
On Wednesday, the FCC announced the end of the 700 MHz spectrum auction, and yesterday, the Commission released the names of the winners. As many industry analysts had predicted, Verizon Wireless submitted the winning bid of $9.6 billion on the nationwide C-block spectrum; AT&T also invested heavily in the 700 MHz spectrum, bidding a total of $6.6 billion for various licenses in the B-block.
But the larger companies weren’t the only winners in the auction. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin noted that “a bidder other than a nationwide incumbent won a license in every market” in the auction and that nearly 70 percent of the licenses went to companies other than the nationwide wireless incumbents. Designated small businesses won 35% of the 1,090 licenses available.
Yesterday’s Open Meeting at the FCC touched on a number of issues related to broadband and telecom. The big news from the meeting was the release of the Commission’s newest report on broadband deployment and adoption in the U.S. As USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a statement after the meeting:
The data released today illustrates the vibrant competition in today’s broadband market and underscores the tremendous efforts and investment that communications companies are making to deploy broadband in the U.S. The numbers also clearly show that millions of Americans are increasingly taking advantage of all that broadband has to offer. Whether for distance learning, health monitoring, protecting the environment or simply for entertainment, consumers are signing up for high-speed services at a record pace so they can reap the countless benefits that broadband delivers.
Also covered at the meeting was the adoption of an order that would bar telecom companies from entering into exclusive service contracts with the owners of multiple dwelling structures; the Commission approved a similar measure for cable video providers last year. Look for an upcoming USTelecom Vidcast with more information on yesterday’s meeting.
And save the date! The FCC has also announced a second en banc meeting to discuss network management. The meeting will take place at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA on April 17.
After weeks of bidding, over 200 rounds, and more than $19.5 billion in submitted bids, the FCC’s closely watched 700 MHz auction is slowing to a crawl and is expected to end soon.
Two big questions, however, remain on the minds of people watching the auction. The first is obvious: Who are the winners? More specifically, who has won the C-block package that adds up to a nationwide license? Verizon and Google were thought to be the companies that were bidding up the package several weeks ago, but due to auction rules, the package will be split, meaning the opportunity for one company to secure a nationwide network may have been lost. Once the auction ends, it will be a few days before the FCC releases its results, but with so many interesting players-including satellite interests, Google, nationwide telecom companies, an oil company, and numerous small companies-auction speculation has been a bit of a pastime for many industry watchers.
The second question is what will become of the apparent failure of the D-block license, a nationwide license that was to be used for a public safety/private partnership? Since the auction started in late January, there has been only a single $472 million bid for the D-block, well below the agency’s $1.3 billion minimum price. In mid-February, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin conceded that he thought an additional bid on the D-block would be unlikely, saying that the Commission would have to go “back to the drawing board” to figure out what to do with the spectrum; as of yet, the Commission has kept mum about any plans or details for a subsequent D-block auction.
