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Feb. 7, 2007

On Feb. 5, President Bush submitted his budget to Capitol Hill, which included $21 billion in projected funds coming from the sale of commercial wireless communications licenses.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to begin auctioning airwaves later this year as TV broadcasters release spectrum so they can shift to better digital signals.

Required by federal law, the sale of these airwaves needs to be completed by January of next year.

But the $21 billion figure, which represents a 16 percent drop compared to 2006’s budget, includes expected proceeds from sales that take place through 2009.

Bush's proposed budget projects that $6.9 billion will be raised during the 2007 fiscal year, $11.85 billion in 2008 and that $2.2 billion will be raised in 2009.

In 2006, the budget estimated that these figures would add up to $25 billion.

Part of the budget includes a request of $313 million to run the FCC and its departments.

Overall, another $1.5 million is needed to help educate Americans about the analog-to-digital TV signal switch coming in February 2009, when analog TV sets will no longer receive a signal over the air.

In September of last year, the FCC brought in $13.9 billion during the ACS auction of more than 1,000 wireless licenses.

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Source: Wireless Week