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June 29, 2010

President Obama says that he intends to almost double the available amount of wireless spectrum over the next ten years in the United States, in an effort to keep up with the ever-growing demand for high-speed video, Internet and data transmission to mobile phones, smartphones, notebooks and other mobile devices.

The White House said President Barack Obama will soon sign a presidential memorandum committing the federal government and the FCC to auction off 500 megahertz of federal and commercial spectrum.

Revenue from the various wireless auctions would be spent on public safety, infrastructure investments and deficit reduction.

Later this week, National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers will explain the new policy in a speech at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

The Obama administration said it hopes to encourage the spread of development of wireless broadband across the U.S., and especially in rural areas.

In part, the wireless auction is intended to counter fears of a potential spectrum shortage as smartphones and laptop computers become more and more popular and an increasing number of new wireless devices relentlessly hit the mobile market.

In an excerpt released by the White House, Summers said "This initiative will catalyze private sector investment, contribute to economic growth and help to create hundreds of thousands of jobs."

Last week, Ruth Milkman, bureau chief for the FCC’s Wireless Communications Division, agreed that unlocking more wireless spectrum is an ambitious plan and that the agency will face some challenges in freeing up most if not all of that spectrum, which the FCC hopes to wrestle from the hands of commercial TV broadcasters that have "enjoyed" all that bandwidth almost since commercial television was invented more than 58 years ago.

To accomplish that feat, the FCC is looking at changes to the current law that require proceeds from spectrum auctions be deposited into the national treasury so that it may instead use some of the proceeds to reimburse TV broadcasters for giving up their precious spectrum assets.

Some say that's a long shot, and that Congress may or may not agree to such a plan.

Whichever direction this takes, the next few months will determine the outcome of the Commission's immediate plans. “We have to have a goal and we know that the 300 megahertz goal is ambitious, but we think it’s achievable,” Milkman said.

However, one change that does appear to be cooking up is a potential loophole in the traditionally strong regulatory sector pursued by the wireless industry’s nationwide operators and spearheaded by the wireless trade association, the CTIA.

Overall, the growing market share difference between the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 operators Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility and the No. 3 and No. 4 operators Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA has started to cause a division amongst the interest of those wireless carriers.

In other news related to wireless spectrum auctions, according to a statement on the Indian department of telecommunication’s Web site, wireless spectrum bids in India for a license to offer speedier mobile services reached almost 110.6 billion rupees or US $2.47 billion on the 22nd day of the auction.

India is auctioning off its wireless spectrum for operating 3G services in the country’s 22 designated telephone service zones.

The government plans to sell 93 licenses to provide high-speed data to wireless phones, smartphones and tablet computers that may raise an estimated 500 billion rupees, helping reduce India’s rapidly rising fiscal deficit.

No less than nine mobile-phone wireless carriers including Vodafone, the world’s largest, and Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest, are vying for the mobile spectrum to offer 3rd generation services in the world’s second-largest wireless market in term of wireless subscribers.

In all, a total of 128 bidding rounds have been completed in the auction and bidding activity will be extended to all zones in round 132 slated for next week, the statement said.

India's government will issue daily updates on the bidding and all data collected from bidders will be made public after the auction has fully completed.

The auction is expected to end May 19.

Last month, the German government took the lead on the deployment of modern 4G technology with the launch of a new wireless spectrum auction involving 360 megahertz of spread across four bands: 800 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2 GHz and 2.6 GHz.

Some wireless industry analysts were expecting the move, and think there's more of this to come in the next few weeks, as they expect other countries in Europe to follow through.

Germany said the spectrum bands were being awarded “on a technology and services-neutral basis,” though most observers expect the spectrum to be used to launch networks using LTE-based technology.

This is a marked difference from previous auctions that required winning bidders to launch a specific technology conforming to the majority of wireless carriers in Europe.

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Source: The White House.