Google, Intel, Skype and Yahoo! Seek Rules for Bidding on Broadcast Frequencies

WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007 – The country’s two satellite television companies have joined forces with four major technology companies and a wireless company to promote the auction of frequencies currently used by television broadcasters.

In a March 5 meeting at the Federal Communications Commission with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, the tech companies – Google, Intel, Skype and Yahoo! – joined with Access Spectrum to promote their “Coalition for 4G in America.”

The engagement of Internet giants like Google and Yahoo!, which traditionally have not lobbied the FCC, suggests considerable interest by the technology industry in the upcoming auction, which is set to begin no later than January 28, 2008. In 2006, Congress fixed February 19, 2009, as the end-date for analog television, freeing a wide swath of radio-frequencies for use by new technologies.

The frequencies to be made available at auction are in the 700 Megahertz (MHz) range, and are among the most desirable because they easily penetrate buildings and trees. Wireless communications using the WiFi wireless broadband standard currently takes place at 2.4 or 5.8 Gigahertz (GHz), frequencies that are much less desirable.

Technology companies like Intel, Microsoft and Motorola played a key role in the lobbying campaign to put a fixed date on the digital television transition. The first priority of the group is to ensure that both the auction date and the digital television switchover date are not altered.

Channels 52 to 69, which are currently used by broadcasters, will be slated for auction. Public safety officials will also have the ability to use four of the old channels for new forms of communication; it is designed to promote interoperability between police officers and firefighters.

Joined by EchoStar and by DirecTV, either of which could enter the market for broadband by acquiring rights to the new frequencies in an auction, the seven companies put forward a “Broadband Optimization Plan” for the use of the frequencies, with minor modifications to a proposal currently under discussion at the FCC.

The new coalition also proposes a form of auction bidding that will enable companies to create nationwide licenses for the use of broadband. “The use of package bidding and the proposed licensing scheme facilitates more efficient geographic and bandwidth aggregation,” said the coalition.

In additional to their meeting with Adelstein, the group sent a letter including their comments in the record. Acting with another company called Pegasus Communications Corporation, Access Spectrum also visited with an advisor for FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, and with an official in the FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

Separately, an Intel official met on March 2 with a range of FCC officials on another section of radio frequencies. Intel is urging that a section of spectrum in the 3.6 GHz range be licensed on an exclusive basis – and hence not available for WiFi.

At the same time, Intel and Microsoft are among the biggest boosters of legislation on Capitol Hill under which television channels vacant within a particular geographic market would be made available for use by WiFi-style technologies capable of detecting when television signals are present. If broadcasters are transmitting on a particular channel in one city, such WiFi devices would switch to another, vacant channel.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/telecomwatch.aspx?eid=2648

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