Administration urges FCC to look at spectrum for wireless broadband

As the Federal Communications Commission works toward developing a national broadband plan by a congressionally mandated Feb. 17 deadline, the Obama administration on Monday weighed in with its views, urging the commission to identify spectrum for wireless broadband in an effort to increase competition in the residential broadband market.

"Given the projections of explosive growth in wireless bandwidth requirements, a primary tool for promoting broadband competition should be to make more spectrum available for broadband wireless services," Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, wrote the FCC. "The administration supports exploring both commercial and government spectrum available for reallocation, and favors a spectrum inventory to determine how radio frequencies are currently being used and by whom."

In its letter, the NTIA noted that in most markets consumers have at best two choices for broadband service and possibly only one that offers the speed they need for such services as online video streaming. Noting the high cost of building a wireline broadband infrastructure, the NTIA said wireless broadband may be the most viable source of competition to the dominant broadband services offered by the cable and telephone companies.

Still, the NTIA noted that "the two largest U.S. wireless providers, Verizon and AT&T, also offer wireline services in major portions of the country, raising the question of whether these providers will market these services as replacements for wireline services, either within the region where they provide wireline services or at all."

In addition, NTIA said that while auctions "under most circumstances" have been the best way to allocate new spectrum frequencies, the administration said dominant broadband players "intent on forestalling new entry that will compete for the incumbents' existing customer base" may be the ones that provide the highest bids for new sources of spectrum. "Based on the Department of Justice's experience with other highly concentrated telecommunications markets, NTIA agrees with the department that 'there are substantial advantages to deploying newly available spectrum in order to enable additional providers to mount stronger challenges to broadband incumbents,'" NTIA wrote.