[wordup] All-but-secret battle rages over fate of airwaves

[Adam Shand]

From: http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-09-05-ncguest1.htm
Via: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/05/1930257&mode=flat

All-but-secret battle rages over fate of airwaves
By Norman Ornstein
09/04/2001 - Updated 08:22 PM ET

Forget Star Wars, the moniker for missile defense, which looms ahead as
one of the classic Washington battles, pitting skeptical Democrats in
Congress against a determined president and his Republican congressional
leaders. It has already received tons of ink and airtime. There is another
battle ahead that has been virtually ignored in newspapers and on the
airwaves that will dwarf Star Wars. Call it "Spectrum Wars."

Here are the basics. The world is moving rapidly toward a new era in
telecommunications: the wireless world. Already close to reality in
Europe, this new world will integrate cellphones, personal data assistants
such as PalmPilots, computers and the Internet, allowing one to
communicate with anybody and get instant information from anywhere no
matter where one is in the world.

This kind of communication is known in the trade as the third generation
of wireless communications ? 3G for short. Despite the American leadership
role in telecommunications, we have been moving much more slowly than the
rest of the world in this area, mainly because we have not allocated the
space on the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose. We risk losing our
leadership role.

Moreover, the longer we wait, the greater the chance that in Europe and
the rest of the world, they will pick a particular common spot on the
airwaves for this purpose. If we do not have that space available, it will
create the prospect that people will be able to communicate easily with
each other in the rest of the world, but not with us, and that our
equipment won't work, or won't work as well, when we travel abroad.

The Federal Communications Commission and U.S. Department of Commerce are
supposed to carve out appropriate territory for this purpose on the
spectrum and auction it off, with the proceeds starting to go into the
public treasury by Sept. 30, 2002. No way. With analog TV, digital TV,
satellite TV, cellphones, emergency services, police and fire
communications, etc., we have a serious shortage of spectrum. Finding
enough space for the United States to move expeditiously toward 3G and
have it work without interference from other uses of the airwaves (or vice
versa) is proving to be very difficult.

Congress is moving to fill the vacuum with ideas of its own. Reps. Chip
Pickering, R-Miss., and Fred Upton, R-Mich., have come up with a plan.
They would take the prime spectrum real estate used by the Pentagon for
its combat, national security and other communications for 3G; auction it
off (their estimates are that it would raise between $25 billion and $45
billion, while outside analysts value it at up to double that amount); use
several billion of the proceeds to pay for the military's transition to
other spaces on the band; and put the rest into a fund for military
modernization.

This proposal has rapidly picked up support and momentum, for several
reasons. Many lawmakers see it as a twofer: With no budget leeway
available for defense-budget increases, the plan can solve the 3G problem
and their post-tax-cut political problem at the same time. Broadcasters
also offered enthusiastic early support, for their own parochial reason:
If the military spectrum is allocated to 3G, the pressure on the
broadcasters to accelerate their transition to digital television and give
back their existing analog spectrum to auction off for the public's
benefit will presumably decline.

But hold on. Yet other lawmakers are beginning to raise questions about a
huge infusion of money into federal coffers ? all to be used for defense.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the most knowledgeable congressman on
telecommunications issues, is drafting a bill that would use some portion
of this windfall for a "Digital Dividends Trust Fund," with income from it
going to educational technology, public broadcasting's conversion to
digital television (DTV), the expansion of broadband communications to
rural areas and the less fortunate, and a national endowment for
children's television.

The military is no passive observer here, either. Pentagon officials are
skeptical, to say the least, about losing their spectrum space, which is
crucial for almost everything they will do in the 21st century. They want
lots of money for a long transition ? and, most importantly, they
reasonably demand an equally useful slice of spectrum for their purposes.
The idea of some key Pentagon actors: Give Defense the analog spectrum
that broadcasters have pledged to return to taxpayers in 2006 after they
were given, free of charge, other large and valuable spectrum space to
convert to digital television.

That, of course, is not what broadcasters had in mind when they threw
their institutional weight behind the Pickering-Upton plan. So the
National Association of Broadcasters is floating a new idea on Capitol
Hill: Let the broadcasters auction off their analog spectrum and use the
revenues to accelerate the rollout of DTV.

The audacity of this idea is breathtaking. After Congress gave
broadcasters public airwaves worth $70 billion ? or far more ? on the
condition that they would return their analog spectrum to the public in a
timely fashion, they now want to keep both, auction one off and pocket the
proceeds!

The public knows little about this; even some experts are unaware of the
machinations. Not surprisingly, television has not covered it. But the
consequences, for all of us, are staggering. Given the stakes, and the
power of the players, it will get attention eventually ? but if past
experience is any guide, only after the critical decisions have been made.
Maybe some reporter, somewhere, now will decide to focus his or her
attention on a potential $200-billion rape of the American taxpayer.

Norman Ornstein is a senior resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.