An interesting divide has opened up in recent months among right-of-center groups about what the FCC should do with the “C Band.” A few weeks ago, the FCC requested public comment on how to proceed with the band.

The C Band is 500 MHz of spectrum that the FCC, like regulators around the globe, dedicated for satellite use years ago and gave to satellite companies to share among each other. Satellite operators typically use it to transmit cable programming to a regional cable network operations center, where it is bundled and relayed to cable subscribers. However, the C Band would work terrifically if repurposed for 5G and cellular services. As Joe Kane explained in a white paper, the FCC and telecom companies are exploring various ways of accomplishing that.

Free-market groups disagree. Should the FCC prioritize:

The quick deployment of new wireless services? Or:

Deficit reduction and limiting FCC-granted windfalls?

This is a complex question since we’re dealing with the allocation of public property. Both sides, in my view, have a defensible free-market position. There are other non-trivial C Band issues like interference protection and the FCC’s authority to act here, but I’ll address the ideological split on the right.

The case for secondary markets

The full 500 MHz of “clean” C Band in the US would be worth tens of billions to cellular companies. However, the current satellite users don’t want to part with all of it and a group of satellite companies using the spectrum estimate they could sell 200 MHz to cellular carriers if the FCC would liberalize its rules to allow flexible uses (like 5G), not merely satellite services. The satellite providers would then be able to sell much of their spectrum on the secondary market (probably to cellular providers) at a nice premium.

Prof. Dan Lyons and Roslyn Layton wrote in support of the secondary market plan on the AEI blog and at Forbes, respectively. Joe Kane also favors the approach. As they say, the benefit of secondary market sales is that it will likely lead a significant and fast repurposing of the C Band for mobile use. The consumer benefits of “upzoned” spectrum are large and with every year of inaction, billions of dollars of consumer welfare evaporate. Hazlett and Munoz estimate that spectrum reallocated from a restricted use to flexible use generates annual consumer benefits in the same order of magnitude as auction value of the spectrum.

I’d add that there’s a history of the FCC upzoning spectrum (SMR spectrum in 2004, EBS spectrum in 2004, AWS-4 in 2011, WCS spectrum in 2012). The FCC is considering doing this with some government spectrum that Ligado or others could repurpose for mobile broadband. In these cases, the FCC upzoned spectrum so that it can be used for higher-valued uses, not legacy uses required by previous FCCs. The circumstances and technologies vary, but some of these bands were repurposed quickly for better uses by cellular providers and are used for 4G LTE today by tens of millions of Americans.

The case for FCC auction

Liberalizing spectrum quickly gets spectrum to higher-valued uses but does raise the complaint that the existing users are gaining an unfair windfall. I’m not sure when the C Band was allocated for satellite but many legacy assignments of spectrum were given to industries for free.

When the FCC upzones spectrum, it typically increases the value of the band. The “secondary market” plan is akin to the government giving away a parcel of public land to a developer to be used for a gas station, then deciding years later to upzone the land so that condo or office buildings can be built on it. It’s a better use for the land, but the gas station operator gains a big windfall when the property value increases. Not only is there a windfall, the government captures no revenue from the increase in the value of public property.

Free-market groups like Americans for Tax Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and Citizens Against Government Waste favor the FCC reclaiming the spectrum from satellite providers, perhaps via incentive auction, and collecting government revenue by re-selling it. If the FCC went the incentive auction route, the FCC would purchase the “satellite spectrum” (ie a low price) from the current C Band users, upzone it, and re-sell that spectrum as “mobile spectrum” (ie a high price) in an open auction. The FCC and the Treasury pocket the difference, probably several billion dollars here.

The FCC has only done one incentive auction, the 600 MHz auction. There, the FCC purchased “TV spectrum” from broadcasters and re-sold it to wireless carriers.

The benefit of this is deficit reduction and there’s more perceived fairness since there’s no big, FCC-granted windfall to legacy users. The downside is that it’s a slower, more complicated process since the FCC is deeply involved in the spectrum transfer. Arguably, however, the FCC should be deeply involved and interested in government revenue since spectrum is public property.

My view

A few years ago I would have definitely favored speed and the secondary market plan. I still lean towards that approach but I’m a little more on the fence after reading Richard Epstein’s work and others’ about the “public trust doctrine.” This is a traditional governance principle that requires public actors to receive fair value when disposing of public property. It prevents public institutions from giving discounted public property to friends and cronies. Clearly, cronyism isn’t the case here and FCC can’t undo what FCCs did generations ago in giving away spectrum. I think the need for speedy deployment trumps the windfall issue here, but it’s a closer call for me than in the past.

One proposal that hasn’t been contemplated with the C Band but might have merit is an overlay auction with a deadline. With such an auction, the FCC gives incumbent users a deadline to vacate a band (say, 5 years). The FCC then auctions flexible-use licenses in the band. The FCC receives the auction revenues and the winning bidders are allowed to deploy services immediately in the “white spaces” unoccupied by the incumbents. The winning bidders are allowed to pay the incumbents to move out before the deadline.

With an overlay auction, you get fairly rapid deployment–at least in the white spaces–and the government gains revenue from the auction. This type of auction was used to deploy cellular (PCS) in the 1990s and cellular (AWS-1) in the 2000s. However, incumbents dislike it because the deadline devalues their existing spectrum holdings.

I think overlay auctions should be considered in more spectrum proceedings because they avoid the serious windfall problems while also allowing rapid deployment of new services. That doesn’t seem in the cards, however, and secondary markets seems like the next best option.

Every week, it seems, there is a news story about another air taxi startup or test flight. Another signal of the industry’s development is that at a House Transportation and Infrastructure hearing last week, Eric Fanning, the President and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, devoted most of his testimony to urging lawmaker action on air taxi (also called vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and, colloquially, flying cars) policy and infrastructure.

The technology is exciting but federal officials are interested in whether the air taxi industry will be a drain on taxpayers. Using government estimates of the air taxi industry and current tax rates for infrastructure-based industries like wireless and oil extraction, I estimate that the air taxi industry could deposit tens of billions of dollars into the US Treasury annually. Hopefully the hundreds of air taxi “vertiports” required are privately funded as well.

Air Taxi Market Size

In November, I published a Wall Street Journal piece about the rapid development and promise of the air taxi industry. Some people inquired as to the potential size of the air taxi market and government revenue. I wasn’t aware of any estimates at the time. Nevertheless, I estimated that the US market could one day reach $200 billion in revenue annually–about the size of the current US aviation market and the US wireless broadband market.

Other analyst and government estimates are now coming out, turns out, my estimates were on the conservative side. For instance, a NASA-funded study (.pdf) estimated that, at the upper limit, the US market could approach $500 billion annually, which is nearly the size of the US auto market. That would require tens of thousands of air taxis serving over 10 million passengers per day.

Experts at McKinsey, NASA, and JP Morgan Chase estimate that the global air taxi market could be anywhere from $615 billion to $3 trillion annually by 2040. Given the potential for this industry, other countries are moving quickly to commercialize air taxis. A German consultancy, Roland Berger, predicts there will be 3,000 commercial air taxis by 2025. The drone expert at the World Economic Forum believes Chinese companies are far ahead when it comes to autonomous air taxi service. That said, the operator of the Frankfurt airport announced a partnership with an eVTOL company recently, and the powerful Japanese trade and industry ministry has convened a 25-member private-public council to develop air taxis. Japanese regulators intend to make Japan the birthplace of urban air taxi service.

Private or Public Funding of Vertiports?

A key decision for US lawmakers is whether the hundreds of vertiports in the US will be privately funded and operated or will, like today’s airports, receive subsidies and public operation. A NASA study estimates that each major US city could support on average about 200 “vertiports.” That would be a major drain on taxpayers if publicly funded.

My working paper on the subject of air taxi traffic management contemplates entirely private funding of urban vertiports and infrastructure. It also proposes that the government auction aerial corridors to air taxi operators. Private infrastructure and the auction of exclusive aerial corridors, in my view, is the safest and most fiscally responsible way to develop the American air taxi market.

However, the FAA and NASA’s plans are unclear on whether air taxi infrastructure will be funded by taxpayers or funded privately. There’s a good chance the FAA and NASA will import the norms and regulations for traditional aviation–open access airspace and public funding of shared airports–into the urban air mobility market. I think that would create an anticompetitive market and be an unnecessary drain on taxpayers.

Government Revenue From the Air Taxi Industry

How much government revenue could be generated by the air taxi industry? We can look to other assets that are auctioned by government for analogues: spectrum and offshore oil sites. There is no “spectrum tax,” but wireless taxes and fees resemble a de facto tax on cellular spectrum. The Tax Foundation puts government (federal, state, and local) wireless taxes and fees at around 9% of annual wireless revenues. For oil leases on federal property, there is a government royalty amounting to about 12.5% of oil revenue.

With these figures in mind, let’s assume that government taxes and fees will one day amount to about 10% of air taxi revenues. Supposing that the US air taxi market will one day fall between my conservative estimate, $200 billion annually, and NASA’s best-case estimate, $500 billion annually, the air taxi industry could one day generate about $20 billion to $50 billion in tax revenue annually. That doesn’t include the auction revenues of aerial corridors, if implemented. If spectrum auctions and offshore oil leases are the best comparison, the auction of aerial corridors could return another $100 billion to the US Treasury.

These are tentative estimates. Market size estimates vary widely, and much depends on whether a workable regulatory framework develops. In any case, like aviation 100 years ago, it’s an exciting area to watch.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) proposed to mandate a government-designed “talking cars” technology–so-called DSRC devices–on all new cars. Fortunately, in part because of opposition from free-market advocates, the Trump administration paused the proposed mandate. The FCC had set aside spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for DSRC technologies in 1999 but it’s been largely unused since then and these new developments raise the question: What to do with that 75 MHz of fairly “clean” spectrum? Hopefully the FCC will take the opportunity to liberalize the use of the DSRC band so it can be put to better uses.

Background

Since the mid-1990s, the USDOT and auto device suppliers have needed the FCC’s assistance–via free spectrum–to jumpstart the USDOT’s vehicle-to-vehicle technology plans. The DSRC disappointment provides an illustration of what the FCC (and other agencies) should not do. DSRC was one of the FCC’s last major “beauty contests,” which is where the agency dispenses valuable spectrum for free on the condition it be used for certain, narrow uses–in this case, only USDOT-approved wireless systems for transportation. The grand plans for DSRC haven’t lived up to its expectations (USDOT officials in 2004 were predicting commercialization as early as 2005) and the device mandate in 2016–now paused–was a Hail Mary attempt to compel widespread adoption of the technology.

Last year, I submitted public interest comments to the USDOT opposing the proposed DSRC mandate as premature, anticompetitive, and unsafe (researchers found, for instance, that “the system will be able to reliably predict collisions only about 35% of the time”). I noted that, a fter nearly 20 years of work on DSRC, the USDOT and their hand-selected vendors had made little progress and were being leapfrogged by competing systems, like automatic emergency brakes,  to say nothing of self-driving cars. The FCC has noticed the fallow DSRC spectrum and Commissioners O’Rielly and Rosenworcel proposed in 2015 to allow other, non-DSRC wireless technologies, like WiFi, into the band.

The FCC’s Role

These DSRC devices use spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band. The FCC set aside  radio spectrum in the band for DSRC applications in 1999 based on a scant 19 comments and reply comments from outside parties. 

Despite the typical flowery language in the 1999 Order, FCC commissioners and Wireless Bureau staff must have had an inkling this was not a good idea. After decades of beauty contests, it was clear the spectrum set-asides were inefficient and anticonsumer, and in 1993 Congress gave the FCC authority to auction spectrum to the highest bidder. The FCC also moved towards “flexible-use” licenses in the 1990s, thus replacing top-down technology choices with market-driven ones. The DSRC set-aside broke from those practices, likely because DSRC in 1999 had powerful backers that the FCC simply couldn’t ignore: the USDOT, device vendors, automakers, and some members of Congress.

The FCC then codified the first DSRC standards in 2003. However, innovation at the speed of government, it turns out, isn’t very speedy at all. The fast-moving connected car industry simply moved ahead without waiting for DSRC technology to catch up.  (Government-selected vendors making devices according to 15-year old government-prescribed technical standards on spectrum allocated by the government in 1999 in a fast-moving technology sector. What could go wrong?)

A Second Chance

So if the DSRC plans didn’t pan out, what should be done with that spectrum? Hopefully the FCC will liberalize the band and, possibly, combine it with the adjacent bands.

The gold standard for maximizing the use of spectrum is flexible-use, licensed spectrum, so the best option is probably liberalizing the DSRC spectrum, combining it with the adjacent higher band (5.925 GHz to 6.425 GHz) and auctioning it. In November 2017, the FCC asked about freeing this latter band for flexible, licensed use.  

The other (probably more popular) option is liberalizing the DSRC band and making it available for free, that is, unlicensed use. Giving away spectrum for free often leads to misallocation but this option is better than keeping it dedicated for DSRC technology. Unlicensed is for flexible uses and allows for many consumer technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth, and unlicensed LTE devices.

Further, because of global technical standards, unlicensed devices in the DSRC band make far more sense, it seems to me, in 5.9 GHz than in the CBRS band* (3.6 GHz), which many countries are using for licensed services like LTE. The FCC is currently trying to simplify the rules in the CBRS band to encourage investment in licensed services, and perhaps that’s a compromise the FCC will reach with those who want more unlicensed spectrum: make 3.6 GHz more accommodating for licensed, flexible uses but in return open the DSRC band to unlicensed devices.

Either way, the FCC has an opportunity to liberalize the use of the DSRC band. Grand plans for DSRC didn’t work out and hopefully the FCC can repurpose that spectrum for flexible uses, either licensed or unlicensed.

*Technically, the GAA devices in the CBRS band are non-exclusive licenses, but the rules intentionally resemble an unlicensed framework.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the White House is crafting a plan for $1 trillion in infrastructure investment. I was intrigued to learn that President Trump “inquired about the possibility of auctioning the broadcast spectrum to wireless carriers” to help fund the programs. Spectrum sales are the rare win-win-win: they stimulate infrastructure investment (cell towers, fiber networks, devices), provide new wireless services and lower prices to consumers, and generate billions in revenue for the federal government.

Broadcast TV spectrum is good place to look for revenue but the White House should also look at federal agencies, who possess about ten times what broadcasters hold.

Large portions of spectrum are underused or misallocated because of decades of command-and-control policies. Auctioning spectrum for flexible uses, on the other hand, is a free-market policy that is often lucrative for the federal government. Since 1993, when Congress authorized spectrum auctions, wireless carriers and tech companies have spent somewhere around $120 billion for about 430 MHz of flexible-use spectrum, and the lion’s share of revenue was deposited in the US Treasury.

A few weeks ago, the FCC completed the $19 billion sale of broadcast TV spectrum, the so-called incentive auction. Despite underwhelming many telecom experts, this was the third largest US spectrum auction ever in terms of revenue and will transfer a respectable 70 MHz from restricted (broadcast TV) use to flexible use.

The remaining broadcast TV spectrum that President Trump is interested in totals about 210 MHz. But even more spectrum is under the President’s nose.

As Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology pointed out in 2012, federal agencies possess around 2,000 MHz of “beachfront” (sub-3.7 GHz) spectrum. I charted various spectrum uses in a December 2016 Mercatus policy brief.

This government spectrum is very valuable if portions can be cleared of federal users. Federal spectrum was part of the frequencies the FCC auctioned in 2006 and 2015, and the slivers of federal spectrum (around 70 MHz of the federal total) sold for around $27 billion combined.

The Department of Commerce has been analyzing which federal spectrum bands could be used commercially and the Mobile Now Act, a pending bill in Congress, proposes more sales of federal spectrum. These policies have moved slowly (and the vague language about unlicensed spectrum in the Mobile Now bill has problems) but the Trump administration has a chance to expedite spectrum reallocation processes and sell more federal spectrum to commercial users.

Is the incentive auction a disappointment? For consumers, this auction is not a disappointment. At least–not yet.

Scott Wallsten at the Technology Policy Institute has a good rundown. My thoughts below:

By my count, this was the eighth major auction of commercial, flexible-use spectrum since auctions were authorized in 1993. On the most important question–how much spectrum was repurposed from restricted uses to flexible, licensed uses?–this auction stacks up pretty well.

At 70 MHz, this was the third largest auction in terms of total spectrum repurposed, trailing the mid-1990s PCS auction (120 MHz) and 2006 AWS-1 auction (90 MHz).

On the next most important question–how quickly will new services be deployed?–the verdict is still out. Historically, repurposing spectrum like this typically takes six to twelve years. Depending on how you classify it, this proceeding commenced in 2010 (when the FCC proposed the incentive auction) or 2012 (when Congress authorized the auction). With the auction over, broadcasters have over three years to clear out of the spectrum but some believe it will take longer. Right now, it looks like the process will take seven to eleven years total–not great but pretty typical. 

Some people are disappointed, however, with this auction, particularly some in the broadcasting industry and in the FCC or Congress, who expected higher auction revenues.

High revenue gets nice headlines but is far less important than the amount of spectrum repurposed. It’s an underreported story but close to 290 MHz of spectrum, nearly 45% of all liberalized, licensed spectrum, was de-zoned by the FCC, not auctioned. De-zoning spectrum generates zero auction revenue for the government but consumers see substantial benefits from this de-zoning, even if the government does not directly benefit. I recently wrote a policy brief about the benefits of de-zoning spectrum.

In any case, in terms of revenue, this auction was not a failure. At around $17 billion, it’s third out of eight, trailing the 2008 700 MHz band auction (about $21 billion in 2015 dollars) and the massive haul from the 2015 AWS-3 auction (about $42 billion).

At close, broadcasters will receive $10 billion for the 70 MHz of available licensed spectrum. Some broadcasters consider it a failure, just as a home seller is disappointed when her home sells below list price. The broadcasters initially requested $86 billion for 100 MHz of available spectrum. When the carriers’ bids didn’t match that price, some broadcasters pulled out and the remaining broadcasters lowered their price.

Were there better ways of repurposing broadcast spectrum? Broadcasters have a point that the complexity of the auction might have reduced buyer and seller participation (which means lower bids and fewer deals). As Wallsten notes, an overlay auction (like AWS-1) or simply de-zoning the spectrum might have been better (faster) alternatives. But it goes too far deem this auction a failure (at least until we know how long the broadcaster repack takes).

The most pressing challenge in wireless telecommunications policy is transferring spectrum from inefficient legacy operators like federal agencies to the commercial sector for consumer use.

Reflecting high consumer demand for more wireless services, in early 2015 the FCC completed an auction for a small slice of prime spectrum–currently occupied by federal agencies and other non-federal incumbents–that grossed over $40 billion for the US Treasury. Increasing demand for mobile services such as Web browsing, streaming video, the Internet of Things, and gaming requires even more spectrum. Inaction means higher smartphone bills, more dropped calls, and stuttering downloads.

My latest research for the Mercatus Center, “Sweeten the Deal: Transfer of Federal Spectrum through Overlay Licenses,” was published recently and recommends the use of overlay licenses to transfer federal spectrum into commercial use. Purchasing an overlay license is like acquiring real property that contains a few tenants with unexpired leases. While those tenants have a superior possessory right to use the property, a high enough cash payment or trade will persuade them to vacate the property. The same dynamic applies for spectrum.

Overlay licenses have been used to reassign non-federal spectrum but never federal spectrum. The paper presents new evidence from a 2006 spectrum auction (AWS-1) that suggests that billions of dollars of underused federal spectrum could be deployed more quickly than other policy alternatives. Crucially, overlay licenses allow agencies to receive payment for spectrum sales and this reordering of spectrum rights would benefit taxpayers and wireless broadband users.

Policymakers are interested in spectrum policy because spectrum availability improves broadband access and generates substantial government revenues. Further, conservative estimates place the consumer surplus losses from misallocation of spectrum at hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Therefore, policymakers should favor reform proposals, like overlay licenses, that show promise in repurposing federal spectrum relatively quickly. The paper compares two policy proposals for spectrum reform: regulation-intensive dynamic spectrum sharing and market-oriented overlay licenses.

Regulation-Intensive Approach. A 2012 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report promotes complex spectrum-sharing technologies to enable consumer use of fallow federal spectrum in order to avoid clearing agencies from their spectrum.

• According to the PCAST report, widespread dynamic spectrum sharing would take decades to implement. The proposal relies on precise government planning and complex device requirements to enable intensive use of federal spectrum. However, the sharing technologies contemplated are in early development and will not be in routine deployment for many years. Social welfare losses mount quickly in the interim.
• Despite recognizing that agencies have no incentive to improve efficient use of their spectrum, this proposal does little to encourage efficient government use of spectrum. Dynamic spectrum sharing techniques allow wasteful legacy systems to operate indefinitely, and PCAST recommends against clearing inefficient federal users.
• Implementation of the PCAST proposal would likely degenerate into regulatory failure. Previous attempts at spectrum sharing between different wireless systems, like the TV White Spaces allocation that PCAST lauds, frequently resulted in rent seeking, severe deployment delays, and relatively few consumer benefits.

Market-Based Approach. A superior reform proposal is to auction off overlay licenses to certain federal spectrum bands. These winning overlay licensees can put unused federal spectrum into service rapidly. For the remaining spectrum that agencies are using, the winning licensee can pay the agency to vacate the bands or upgrade to more efficient systems. Agency resistance may be mitigated because agencies can negotiate compensation for selling rights to their spectrum.

• The FCC has conducted overlay auctions in the past and they represent an “off-the-shelf” tool to reorder spectrum rights. In previous overlay auctions, the process was effective and winning bidders compensated existing users like state public safety agencies and public utilities to vacate their valuable spectrum.
• Overlay license auctions and clearing deadlines transfer spectrum into the market and to its highest-valued uses. For example, in as few as two years after the 2006 AWS-1 auction, existing users and federal agencies vacated their spectrum, allowing carriers to invest billions of dollars into networks and deploy mobile broadband in cities like San Francisco and New York.
• A combination of clearing federal agencies from their spectrum and using overlays to clear nonfederal users has freed about 210 MHz of prime spectrum for mobile broadband use, supplying over one third of spectrum held by mobile carriers today.

Government agencies sit on wireless spectrum worth hundreds of billions of dollars rent-free. This federal spectrum is often unused or underutilized and the misallocation of this valuable resource is socially costly. My paper proposes that Congress permit agencies to sell some of their spectrum to private parties after an overlay auction. No other reform proposal has enabled widespread consumer use and economic investment as rapidly as have overlay auctions combined with clearing deadlines. Overlays and clearing deadlines in the recent past have permitted commercial deployment of cutting-edge wireless technologies in encumbered spectrum within a few years.

Related Research Reclaiming Federal Spectrum: Proposals and Recommendations

Both parties of Congress has been increasingly critical of federal agencies’ inefficient use of spectrum in the past few years and it seems like agencies are getting the message. The NTIA, which is the official manager of federal agency spectrum, released a letter yesterday announcing that the Department of Defense would be relocating some of its systems. Defense had reached an agreement with broadcasters that Defense systems will share spectrum in the Broadcast Auxiliary Service (BAS) band.

The soon-to-be vacated band held by Defense will eventually be auctioned off–hopefully in 2014–for billions of dollars and likely used for mobile broadband provided by wireless carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. These carriers face serious congestion problems because of government-created scarcity of spectrum.

The carriers actually had targeted some of BAS spectrum because they weren’t convinced Defense would be willing to move their systems. The broadcaster deal reached with Defense means everyone’s apparently happy–the broadcasters can keep their BAS spectrum, the feds get new equipment and Congress off their back (temporarily), and the carriers get new spectrum for auction.

The deal is welcome news because the spectrum will be put to a higher-valued use once auctioned. The federal government pays almost nothing for its own spectrum and is a poor steward of the resource. Transferring spectrum from agencies to carriers means lower phone bills and more mobile broadband coverage. Government agencies are notoriously resistant to moving their systems or sharing with others, so entering into a sharing pact with the broadcasters indicates some of the resistance is thawing.

It’s not unequivocal good news, though.

The government is clearing out from a 25 MHz band of spectrum and occupying the larger, 85 MHz BAS band that will be shared with broadcasters. The military will need a larger band because sharing imposes some capacity constraints necessitating new, agile systems that search the airwaves to make sure they don’t interfere with existing broadcast users. Dynamic sharing like this only adds to the cost and complexity and may imperil next years’ planned auction.

Further, the BAS band is unavailable for auction only because of the antiquated command-and-control regime the FCC uses to award spectrum licenses. BAS is mostly used for electronic news gathering, which relays local and national newscasts from reporters on the scene to broadcast studios. Broadcasters have used BAS spectrum since the 1960s when it was allocated to them for free.

In a market, broadcasters likely would not have as much BAS spectrum as they currently have. In fact, because of technology changes and squeezed newsroom budgets, broadcasters are finding cheaper alternatives. Increasingly, journalists are using carriers’ LTE technology to transmit their breaking newscasts since the technology costs a fraction of the cost of news vans and equipment needed for BAS transmissions. That is to say, there are alternative business models in the absence of Soviet-style allocations.

So despite these industry changes, BAS spectrum cannot be auctioned for its highest-valued use (probably mobile broadband) under current FCC rules. Further, it will be even more difficult to bring the benefits of auctions to the airwaves if federal users are intermingling with existing users, broadcasters in this case. It’s a trend to be wary of. Let’s just hope that next year’s planned auctions occur on time so that more consumers can benefit from mobile broadband.

I recently prepared a paper for the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition and Consumer Electronics Association that provides empirical data regarding the costs of restricting the eligibility of large firms to participate in FCC spectrum auctions (available in PDF here). The paper demonstrates that there is no significant likelihood that an open incentive auction would substantially harm the competitive positions of Sprint and T-Mobile. It also demonstrates that Sprint and T-Mobile have incentives to constrain the ability of Verizon and AT&T to expand their network capacity, and that Sprint and T-Mobile could consider FCC restraints on their primary rivals a “win” even if Sprint and T-Mobile don’t place a single bid in the incentive auction. (Winning regulatory battles is a lot cheaper than winning spectrum in a competitive auction.)

Some might think it is implausible that Sprint or T-Mobile would decide to forgo participation in the incentive auction. However, the recent announcement by Sprint that it won’t compete in the H block auction highlights the difficulty in predicting accurately whether any particular company will participate in a particular auction. Sprint’s announcement stunned market analysts, who had considered Sprint a key contender for the H block spectrum. Until recently, Sprint had given every indication it was keen to acquire this spectrum, which is located directly adjacent to the nationwide G block that Sprint already owns. It participated heavily in the FCC’s service rules proceeding for the H block (WT Docket No. 12-357) and even conducted its own testing to assist the FCC in assessing the technical issues. But, by the time the H Block auction was actually announced, Sprint decided its business would be better served by focusing its efforts on the deployment of its trove of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band.

Such reversals are not unusual during the FCC auction process. Frontline Wireless, a company that no longer exists, successfully persuaded the FCC that it would build a nationwide, interoperable public safety network in the 700 MHz band, if the FCC imposed a public/private partnership condition on the D Block. But, shortly before the auction was scheduled to start, Frontline announced that it had been unable to obtain sufficient financing, and as a result, the D block was never sold.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Sprint or Frontline acted deceitfully in seeking spectrum rules they considered favorable to their interests without actually participating in the resulting auction. My point is that there is a critical distinction between regulatory efforts and business decisions. Companies often participate in regulatory proceedings to optimize their potential business options, but the results they seek are just that –  options – until a business decision must be made.

This distinction leads to another important point: It is impossible for the FCC to predict accurately the ultimate business decisions of multiple independent companies whose particular business plans and the circumstances determining them are unknown to the FCC or anybody else. A particular company often cannot accurately predict its  own decisions in rapidly changing circumstances (e.g., when Frontline was lobbying the FCC, it could not know with certainty that it would obtain the financing it required to buy the D Block). This inherent uncertainty is why the discredited licensing methodology of comparative hearings failed. It required the FCC to make reliable predictive judgments about the needs and efficiency of potential spectrum users, which proved to be an impossible task.

Ironically, the bidding restrictions proposed for the incentive auction are a form of “comparative hearing lite”. The DOJ’s recommendation – that the FCC “ensure” that Sprint and T-Mobile win spectrum in the incentive auction – is based on its own predictive judgments regarding the relative spectrum needs of all four nationwide mobile providers and their willingness to use future spectrum resources efficiently. Of course, there is no reason to believe that the DOJ is capable of judging such matters more reliably than the FCC did during the era of comparative hearings. As the H and D Block auctions demonstrate, it is impossible for the DOJ to know whether Sprint and T-Mobile will even show up to participate in the incentive auction.

CBS and Time Warner Cable have been embroiled in a heated contractual battle over the past week that has resulted in viewers in some major markets losing access to CBS programming. When disputes like these go nuclear and signal blackouts occur, it is inevitable that some folks will call for policy interventions since nobody likes it when the content they love goes dark.

While some policy responses are warranted in this matter, policymakers should proceed with caution. Heated contractual negotiations are a normal part of any capitalist marketplace. We shouldn’t expect lawmakers to intervene to speed up negotiations or set content prices because that would disrupt the normal allocation of programming by placing a regulatory thumb too heavily on one side of the scale. This is why I am somewhat sympathetic to CBS in this fight. In an age when content creators struggle to protect their copyrighted content and get compensation for it, the last thing we need is government intervention that undermines the few distribution schemes that actually work well.

On the other hand, Time Warner Cable deserves sympathy here, too, since CBS currently enjoys some preexisting regulatory benefits. As I noted in this 2012 Forbes oped, “Toward a True Free Market in Television Programming,” many layers of red tape still encumber America’s video marketplace and prevent a truly free market in video programming from developing. The battle here revolves around the “retransmission consent” rules that were put in place as part of the Cable Act of 1992 and govern how video distributors carry signals from TV broadcasters, which includes CBS.

But those “retrans” rules are not the only part of the regulatory mess here. There are many related federal rules that tip the scales toward broadcasters and content creators, such as the requirement that video distributors carry broadcast signals even if they don’t want to (“must carry”); rules that prohibit distributors from striking deals with broadcasters outside their local communities (“network non-duplication” and “syndicated exclusivity” rules); regs specifying where broadcast channels appear on the cable channel lineup; and prohibitions against carrying sporting events on cable when the local stadium doesn’t sell all its seats on game day (“sports blackout rule”).

As they say on TV.. ” But Wait, There’s More!” Working in the favor of video distributors are the compulsory licensing requirements of the Copyright Act of 1976, which essentially forced a “duty to deal” upon broadcasters. Broadcasters have to let cable operators and other video distributors retransmit local stations, though the system at least ensures they get compensated for it. As I noted in my old Forbes essay, along with must carry rules, “Compulsory licensing is the original sin of video marketplace regulation. We could have avoided most of the regulatory mess of the past quarter century if Congress had simply left these rights and contractual negotiations alone. Once Congress forced broadcasters to share their programming, however, marketplace manipulation was off and rolling.”

Of course, the more primal and problematic intervention came decades before in the 1920s and ’30s when the government decided to nationalize spectrum management. Once mandates instead of markets where chosen as the primary allocation agent, America was off and running with a grand experiment in spectrum central planning. We’re still living with the results today. The very fact that spectrum is licensed and can only be used and sold for very narrow purposes as detailed in meticulous FCC regulations is a sign of just how far-removed we are from a pure free market here.

The question now is, what are we going to do about this fine mess? And is there any chance we can get it done?

The problem in this debate is that there are multiple layers of interventions that have built up over the years and created constituencies that are wedded to their preservation. Broadcasters, networks, independent content creators, big cable companies, small cable companies, satellite companies, sports leagues, and viewing consumers themselves — they all have conflicting interests and a stake in how this debate turns out. In his 2012 Mercatus Center working paper, “Consumer Welfare and TV Program Regulation,” media economist Bruce M. Owen noted that “What distinguishes TV programs from other mass media content, including both traditional print and new online media, is the extreme eagerness of Washington to engage in efforts to prevent markets from working freely, often in response to interest group pressures and opportunities for political advantage and with almost complete indifference to the welfare of consumers.”

As a result, if you talk to almost anyone involved in this debate, they will all insist that only their very specific reforms are the ones that can or should be implemented. Consequently, comprehensive reform will be challenging precisely because of all the conflicting interests and layers of law and regulation that must be eradicated.

But at least there is a blueprint for how to get the job done right. Many times here before I have written about “The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act,” which was floated last session by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and then-Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). It proposed wiping off the books all the archaic rules outlined above. Alas, the bill never went anywhere in the last Congress and now that Sen. DeMint has left to lead the Heritage Foundation, there is no supporter in the Senate this session. Instead, we have some lawmakers floating bad ideas like S.912, the “Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013,” which just proposes more regulatory gaming of an already over-gamed system.

We instead need policy reforms like the old DeMint-Scalise bill that clean up the regulatory mess of the past. But there just isn’t much appetite for such a house-cleaning. Most parties affected by these rules want very specific outcomes and deregulation won’t give them any such guarantees. After all, there will still be blackouts after deregulation. And the cost of some content may continue to go up in response to demand. And there will still be fights over sports programming. And there’s no certainty that all local broadcasters or small video distributors will survive. And so on, and so on.

But it is also true that a deregulatory environment is more likely to lead to even more experimentation and innovation with new business models, technologies, and methods of content creation and delivery. We already see much innovation in this marketplace despite all the red tape that exists. Just look at what’s been going on recent years with alternative video delivery platforms, including: Netflix, Hulu, XBox Live, Vudu, Roku, Redbox, Boxee, Amazon, Apple TV, Aereo, Google Chromecast, and so on. And don’t forget the strides that the old broadcast and cable giants have made here, too. CBS is actually a pretty good model for how content can be re-purposed online in creative ways on a firm’s own digital platform. Likewise, cable companies like Time Warner Cable are slowly but surely adapting to consumers’ demand for video to be delivered to multiple devices.

Of course, there there will always be hiccups along the road to video nirvana. Some regulatory activists seemingly expect that all content can be delivered effortless and cheaply to consumers without giving a thought in the world to just how complicated it is to get that content financed and distributed in the first place. Great content and great delivery platforms don’t just happen by magic or the good intentions of activists or policymakers. Those platforms happen because new markets and monetization mechanisms develop to facilitate them. If we cut back the regulatory deadwood in our modern information marketplace, we’d likely get even more experimentation and innovation that would likely produce all new ways of financing, creating, and delivering content to consumers. But we’ll never know unless we are willing to embrace change and kill all those old regulatory weeds that continue to grow in our information garden.

Alas, if Congress can’t muster the courage to do that, then lawmakers ought to at least consider asking the broadcasters to return all that juicy spectrum they are sitting on. After all, the current retrans racket gives the broadcasters an increasingly lucrative revenue stream when they deliver content on cable and satellite systems (in addition to the advertising revenues they already receive). No good reason exists to give them preferential treatment relative to any other cable channel out there today. Don’t forget, there are all sorts of garden-variety cable carriage disputes that happen outside the regulated retrans system today. (Remember last year’s big spats between AMC vs. Dish and Viacom vs. DirecTV?) There are no special rules that either side can rely on in those instances. So why should special rules be applied to other content companies simply because some of their properties are broadcast channels? Answer: they shouldn’t.

But if no other reforms occur and if companies like CBS still want to be more like a cable mega-channel — albeit, a very handsomely compensated cable channel — then by all means go for it. In the meantime, however, they can return all that spectrum for re-auction for some better purpose. In fact, back early 2009, CBS Corp. President and CEO Les Moonves told an investor conference that moving all CBS network programming to cable and satellite platforms would be “a very interesting proposition.” I agree! But, absent other reforms, it might be time to make that “interesting proposition” a mandatory one.

Frontline relied on the DOJ foreclosure theory to predict that the lack of eligibility restrictions in the 700 MHz auction would “inevitably” increase prices, stifle innovation, and reduce the diversity of service offerings as Verizon and AT&T warehoused the spectrum. In reality, the exact opposite occurred.

The DOJ recently recommended that the FCC rig the upcoming incentive auction to ensure Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are winners and Verizon and AT&T are losers. I previously noted that the DOJ spectrum plan (1) inconsistent with its own findings in recent merger proceedings and the intent of Congress, (2) inherently discriminatory, and (3) irrational as applied. Additional analysis indicates that it isn’t supported by economic theory or FCC factual findings either.

Economic Theory

The Phoenix Center published a paper with an economic simulation that exposes the fundamental economic defect in the foreclosure theory underlying the DOJ recommendation. The DOJ implicitly recognizes that the “private value” of spectrum (the amount a firm is willing to pay) equals its “use value” (derived from using spectrum to meet consumer demand) plus its “foreclosure value” (derived from excluding its use by rivals). In its application of this theory, however, the DOJ erroneously presumes that Verizon and AT&T would derive zero use value from the acquisition of additional spectrum – a presumption that is inconsistent with the FCC findings that prompted the auction.

The Phoenix Center notes that  all firms – including Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile – derive a foreclosure value from the acquisition of spectrum due to its scarcity. When considering the benefits to consumers, it is the comparative use value of the spectrum for each provider that is relevant. If the use value of the spectrum to Verizon and AT&T exceeds that of Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, economic theory says Verizon and AT&T would maximize the potential consumer benefits of that spectrum irrespective of its foreclosure value.

Of course, determining the differing use values of spectrum to particular firms is what spectrum auctions are for, which brings the DOJ’s argument full circle: If government bureaucrats at the DOJ and the FCC could accurately assess the use values of spectrum, we wouldn’t need to hold spectrum auctions in the first place.

The circularity of the DOJ theory explains its reliance on an unsubstantiated presumption that Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile have the highest use value for the spectrum. If the DOJ had instead (1) conducted a thorough factual investigation, (2) analyzed the resulting data to assign bureaucratic use values for the spectrum to each of the four nationwide mobile providers, and (3) compared the results to determine that Verizon and AT&T had lower use values, the DOJ would have engaged in the same failed “comparative hearing” analysis that Congress intended to avoid when it authorized spectrum auctions. Given the Congressional mandate to auction spectrum yielded by the broadcasters, the FCC cannot engage in a comparative process to pick winners and losers, and it certainly cannot substitute an unsubstantiated presumption for an actual comparative process in order to avoid the legal prohibition.

FCC Factual Findings

The foreclosure theory and DOJ presumption are also inconsistent with the auction experience and current factual findings of the FCC. The DOJ foreclosure theory has been presented to the FCC before and has proved invalid by the market.

When the FCC was developing rules for the 700 MHz auction in 2007, Frontline Wireless sought preferential treatment using the same foreclosure theory as the DOJ. Frontline submitted a paper (prepared by Stanford professors of economics and management) that relied on the same types of information and reached the same conclusion as the DOJ – that Verizon and AT&T were dominant “low-frequency” wireless incumbents with “strong incentives” to acquire and warehouse 700 MHz spectrum, and that their participation in the 700 MHz auction must be limited in order to “promote competition” and prevent “foreclosure.” Frontline predicted that, if Verizon and AT&T were not prevented from bidding in the 700 MHz auction, it would “inevitably lead to higher prices, stifled innovation, and reduced diversity of service offerings.”

The FCC rejected Frontline’s foreclosure theory. The FCC concluded that, “given the number of actual wireless providers and potential broadband competitors, it [was] unlikely that [incumbents] would be able to behave in an anticompetitive manner as a result of any potential acquisition of 700 MHz spectrum.”

The last five years have proven that the FCC was correct. Though Verizon and AT&T acquired significant amounts of unfettered 700 MHz spectrum, the auction results have not led to the “higher prices, stifled innovation, and reduced diversity of service offerings” predicted by Frontline. In its most recent mobile competition report, the FCC reported that:

• Verizon used its 700 MHz spectrum to deploy a 4G LTE network to more than 250 million Americans less than four years after Verizon’s 700 MHz licenses were approved (i.e., it didn’t warehouse the spectrum).

• Mobile wireless prices declined overall in 2010 and 2011, and the price per megabyte of data declined 89% from the 3^rd quarter of 2008 – a few months before Verizon received its 700 MHz licenses – to the 4^th quarter of 2010 (i.e., industry prices decreased).

• The number of subscribers to mobile Internet access services more than doubled from year-end 2009 to year-end 2011 (i.e., industry output increased).

• Prepaid services are growing at the fastest rate, and new wholesale and connected device services are growing significantly (i.e., providers continued to provide new and diverse service offerings).

• Market concentration has remained essentially unchanged since 2008 (the population weighted average of HHIs increased from 2,842 in 2008 to 2,873 in 2011 – a change of only 1 percent).

Remember: Frontline relied on the DOJ foreclosure theory to predict that the lack of eligibility restrictions in the 700 MHz auction would “inevitably” increase prices, stifle innovation, and reduce the diversity of service offerings as Verizon and AT&T warehoused the spectrum. In reality, the exact opposite occurred. Verizon and AT&T did not warehouse the spectrum, industry prices decreased while output increased, diverse new service offerings exhibited the strongest growth, and market concentration remained essentially unchanged. And, while competition thrived, consumers reaped the benefits.

So, why would the DOJ make the same failed argument for the 600 MHz auction (other than crony capitalism)? Some might say, “Even the boy who cried wolf was right once.” But, even if one were inclined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt, the theoretical possibility that the foreclosure theory could adversely impact the 600 MHz auction must be weighed against the potential harm of limiting participation in the auction.

The harm is well documented and could prove particularly problematic in this auction. A paper coauthored by Leslie Marx, who led the design team for the 700 MHz auction when she was the FCC’s Chief Economist, demonstrates that excluding Verizon and AT&T would have even more severe consequences in the incentive auction than in previous auctions.

A paper published by economists at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy attempts to quantify the severity of these consequences. It estimates that excluding Verizon and AT&T from the auction could reduce revenues by as much as 40 percent ($12 billion) – a result that would jeopardize funding for the nationwide public safety network, reduce the amount of spectrum made available for wireless Internet services, and adversely affect more than 118,000 U.S. jobs. That is a steep price to pay for the privilege of seeing whether the boy is crying wolf again.

If the FCC had adopted the eligibility restrictions proposed by PISC in 2007, the United States would not have achieved the LTE leadership touted by current FCC Chairman Genachowski.

I was pleased to see FCC Chairman Genachowski praise the market-based policies of his predecessors in his remarks at Vox last week. He noted that the United States is currently leading the world in next generation mobile wireless services with 69 percent of the world’s LTE subscribers, which he attributes to “smart government policies.” He didn’t mention, however, that the “smart government policies” that led to America’s renewed mobile leadership were based on market principles adopted by the previous FCC.

Verizon built the world’s largest LTE network using 700 MHz spectrum it won in an open auction that ended in early 2008 (which also raised a record $19 billion for the U.S. Treasury). When the rules governing the 700 MHz band were developed, a coalition of so-called “public interest” groups (known as “PISC”) urged the FCC to prohibit any company with 45 MHz of spectrum from participating in the auction (the limit in the 1990s-era “spectrum cap”) as well as incumbent telephone and cable providers. The requested prohibition would have prevented the four largest nationwide wireless providers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile), cable incumbents, and a host of other companies from participating in the auction – which also happen to be the companies that are in the best position to invest in our Nation’s infrastructure and help America win the global bandwidth race.

Though Genachowski and others are quick to praise the results of the 700 MHz auction today, when the auction was completed, many were “disappointed” that Verizon bought the largest block of spectrum in the band. They argued that Verizon “didn’t even need” the spectrum, and believed that Verizon intended to “warehouse” it. These concerns led to a delay in the grant of Verizon’s 700 MHz licenses. Commissioners Copps and Adelstein were concerned that Verizon would have too much spectrum as a result of the auction, and demanded the application of the FCC’s “spectrum screen” after the auction had already concluded. As a result, Verizon “voluntarily” agreed to divest spectrum to secure grant of its 700 MHz licenses, and the FCC stated that it would apply its spectrum screen to future auction winners.

Four years later, it’s obvious that Verizon didn’t pay nearly ten billion dollars for its 700 MHz spectrum merely to sit on it. If, as some previously believed, Verizon had purchased the spectrum for the purpose of foreclosing competition, it would not have aggressively deployed the world’s largest 4G LTE network in that spectrum. Verizon’s deployment accelerated AT&T’s LTE plans, and sent competitive ripples throughout the rest of the mobile market, leading to LTE deployments by Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and others. The rapid deployment of LTE in the United States was thus enabled by the 700 MHz auction rules, which did not contain eligibility restrictions on Verizon or any other bidders.

If the FCC had adopted the eligibility restrictions proposed by PISC in 2007, the United States would not have achieved the LTE leadership touted by current FCC Chairman Genachowski. In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office found that the FCC’s imposition of similar eligibility restrictions on the Broadband PCS band in the 1990s caused spectrum to lie fallow for a decade in many markets due to financial and legal issues that prevented the auction winners from providing service. Winning bidders in the initial auctions (FCC Auctions 5 and 10) for C-block licenses in the Broadband PCS band returned to the FCC for re-auction licenses that accounted for one-third of the block’s potential wireless coverage, and another one-third in potential wireless coverage was contested in bankruptcy and other legal proceedings. The eligibility restrictions placed on Broadband PCS spectrum deprived the mobile industry of approximately 30 MHz of nationwide bandwidth for close to a decade at a cost to society of approximately $65 billion. In all auctions other than the market-based 700 MHz and AWS-1 auctions, the FCC has generated $45 billion in net winning bids, but transmitted only $19 billion to the U.S. Treasury. The other $26 billion was lost through defaults, bankruptcies, and other licensing debacles enabled by FCC auction policies designed to favor certain bidders.

If history is any guide, the imposition of the eligibility restrictions on the 700 MHz band spectrum requested by the PISC would have delayed LTE deployment in the United States, and our opportunity to gain global leadership would have been squandered. It’s ironic that, despite his recognition of “smart government policy” in the 700 MHz auction, Genachowski championed the imposition of eligibility restrictions on the broadcast spectrum that will be repurposed for mobile use through an incentive auction and argued that more of this spectrum should be made available on an unlicensed basis. Congress wisely prohibited eligibility restrictions in the broadcast incentive auction and limited the FCC’s discretion to allocate it on an unlicensed basis, but those Congressional restraints are limited to that particular auction. The FCC retains enormous discretion to engage in the failed interventionist policies of the past when it evaluates secondary market transactions and repurposes spectrum in other ways.

Genachowski’s tendency to try to “outsmart” the market is a cause for concern in the proceeding to examine spectrum aggregation launched last week. The proceeding presents an opportunity to establish guidelines that would enhance market-based transactions in spectrum. There is a danger, however, that the FCC will use the proceeding as an opportunity to disadvantage incumbents in an effort to create new wireless competition through “smart government policies” rather than fair market opportunities.

The last time Genachowski tried to create a new competitor resulted in the LightSquared debacle. We can only hope that Genachowski has since learned that market oriented spectrum policies are the key to a U.S. victory in the global bandwidth race.

Beyond the fact that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to release the executive summary of its long awaited National Broadband Plan via a PDF of a scanned printed copy, there are other reasons to be concerned about the agency’s ability to centrally plan one of the most important, fast-moving sectors of our economy.  In this video clip, I discussed some of my general reservations with the idea of a gargantuan government industrial policy for the broadband sector, and in this essay I noted how, from what we’ve see of the plan thus far [Executive Summary], the FCC appears to be engaged in some creative accounting techniques to fund the scheme.

Not everything in The Plan troubles me, however, and I hope to touch on some of the more sensible elements in a future post. But, as I was reading through it, I flagged 5 regulatory hot potatoes in the plan that threaten to derail the entire thing.  In this regard, the parallels between the National Broadband Plan and the debate over health care “reform” are really quite striking. Indeed, it appears the Administration has once again settled upon a “go for broke” (potentially quite literally!) strategy. In both cases, they appear hell-bent and trying to do it all in the form of One Big Plan. Now, I won’t lie to you; such everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink public policy gambits make me nervous based simply on the sheer scale of the undertaking. When Washington tries to regulate massive chunks of the economy using bloated bills and bureaucracies inside the Beltway, it troubles me greatly. But even if the sound of Big Government on Steroids doesn’t raise your blood pressure, one would hope that the prospect of political gridlock and litigation hell would force advocates to scale back their ambitions a tad bit. After all, what good is a plan that can never pass or be implemented?

That’s why I was rather surprised to see these 5 regulatory initiatives teed up in the National Broadband Plan:

(1) Return of the Forced Access Regulatory Nightmare? The Plan says the FCC will, “Undertake a comprehensive review of wholesale competition rules to help ensure competition in fixed and mobile broadband services.” As my friend Randy May of the Free State Foundation notes:

In plainer English, this means considering requiring that some Internet service providers unbundle and share their networks with other would-be competitors. The FCC tried that approach of “managed competition” in the late ’90s in implementing the Telecom Act of 1996. The result was not pretty. Investment was stifled. The court ultimately overturned the FCC’s mandatory sharing rules – but not before a lot of damage was done. The FCC shouldn’t even start down this road again.

Indeed, as the southern gentleman that he is, Randy is once again being far too kind in his assessment of things. Forced access regulation was a public policy fiasco of the first order. As I documented in my essay,”Will the FCC’s Nat’l Broadband Plan Be ‘Full Employment for Lawyers’?”, in the years following passage of the Telecom Act, entire forests fell because of the thousands of pages of regulatory and judicial interpretations that were handed down trying to figure out how to interpret what just one word (“cost”) meant. And the economic devastation of infrastructure socialism was substantial since it greatly retarded investment and innovation by incumbents and new “entrants” alike. But those new entrants weren’t really entering the market at all. They were just “networks built on paper,” to use Peter Huber’s wonderful phrase. Our regulators labored under the illusion that they could create the fiction of competition based upon infrastructure sharing. The problem, however, is that sharing is not competing. The only thing that you can accomplish with a forced access regime is that you can milk the regulated monopoly you create until it runs dry; you can force that network provider to share its entire network with “competitors” at regulatory wholesale rates until you basically eat all the seed stock in terms of future investment and innovation on that network. If, on the other hand, you want competitive and highly innovative facilities-based networks, then you must allow carriers to earn a fair return on their investment and be free of arbitrary network-sharing mandates like the FCC is now apparently considering once again.

Even if you disagree with everything I’ve just said about forced access regulation, you cannot deny this: If the FCC walks down this path once again, it will lead to another round of epic legal battles and will tie up The Plan in Congress, the FCC, and the courts for years to come.  That doesn’t seem like a very sensible thing to include the National Broadband Plan if you hope to incentivze new network creation and investment in the short-term.

(2) Set-top Box Regulation: The Plan says the FCC will:

Change rules to ensure a competitive and innovative video set-top box market, to be consistent with Section 629 of the Telecommunications Act. The Act says that the FCC should ensure that its rules achieve a competitive market in video “navigation devices,” or set-top boxes-the devices consumers use to access much of the video they watch today.

What this means is that the agency wants to muck around with the TV market even more in an attempt to engineer next generation set-top boxes and transmission standards. This battle has been going on for many years, actually. In particular, cable operators and some consumer electronics companies have long been engaged in heated technical disputes over set-top boxes, “digital cable ready” equipment, and “plug-and-play” interactive applications. Basically, it’s a fight about how various features or services available on video distribution networks should work. In the old days the battle was over features like electronic programming guides (EPGs), video-on-demand (VOD), pay-per-view (PPV) services, and other interactive television (ITV) capabilities. And now it’s over the Internet and access to online video services.

But here’s the question that I asked in an old paper on the topic (“Unplugging Plug-and-Play Regulation“) that I found myself asking again after I saw this mentioned in the FCC’s Broadband Plan: Why is this issue — and technical disputes about next generation hardware standards — even before the FCC? Why are regulators being asked to make technical determinations that could skew marketplace developments and innovation for years to come? Again, you won’t be surprised to hear I am skeptical of the agency’s ability to somehow micromanage next generation video standards better than marketplace experimentation would. Moreover, what the heck is the problem here? Who the hell cares about set-top boxes in a world of abundant video choices across a broad range of media devices? And, again, how is all of this going to stimulate more investment and innovation in broadband? You got me.

Again, even if you disagree with everything I’ve just said about this issue as well, ask yourself if it’s really worth putting everything else in The Plan at risk for a regulatory initiative like this.

(3) Privacy Regulation: The Plan says the FCC will:

Clarify the relationship between users and their online profiles to enable continued innovation and competition in applications and ensure consumer privacy, including the obligations of firms collecting personal information to allow consumers to know what information is being collected, consent to such collection, correct it if necessary, and control disclosure of such personal information to third parties.

Wow, who knew the FCC was suddenly a privacy regulator!  Talk about mission creep. This agency has zero experience dealing with something as complicated as online privacy policy and yet here they are embarking on a bold new regulatory project to investigate privacy regulation as part of a plan to promote broadband diffusion.

Although the description of what the FCC plans to do is pretty vague, the phrase “obligations of firms collecting personal information to… consent to such collection” sounds an awful lot like a regulatory mandate by which opt-in would be required as a restrictive default. If you want to better understand why that will be so controversial, read this testimony by Berin Szoka and this testimony by Braden Cox (both to the FCC on this issue), as well as Berin’s excellent testimony to the FTC late last year on the broader issues at stake here.

Again, why muck up The Plan with something this controversial? Makes no sense.

(4) Broadcast spectrum confiscation? The Plan says the FCC will:

Enable incentives and mechanisms to repurpose spectrum to more flexible uses. Mechanisms include incentive auctions, which allow auction proceeds to be shared in an equitable manner with current licensees as market demands change. These would benefit both spectrum holders and the American public. The public could benefit from additional spectrum for high-demand uses and from new auction revenues. Incumbents, meanwhile, could recognize a portion of the value of enabling new uses of spectrum. For example, this would allow the FCC to share auction proceeds with broadcasters who voluntarily agree to use technology to continue traditional broadcast services with less spectrum.

In my essay from earlier today, (“Will the FCC’s National Broadband Plan Really Be Costless?”), I already noted why this idea is so controversial. As I noted:

Most of the spectrum they want to grab is currently occupied by someone else. In fact, a huge chunk of that 500 megahertz would come from licensed television broadcasters, who aren’t exactly excited about getting and an eviction notice from the government. Even if one agrees with the FCC that the broadcast band is currently under-utilized, that doesn’t mean that the broadcasters should be forced to vacate it. Moreover, any attempt to force them off would result in an epic legal battle that would take years to resolve and ultimately would not likely be resolved in the government’s favor.

It’s going to take huge sums of money to get the broadcasters to vacate voluntarily. That’s just a reality. People can whine all they want about “the people owning the airwaves,” but it’s bunk that isn’t going to stand up in court. Even if you like your odds of winning a massive spectrum confiscation case, do you have any idea how long it will take to fight the legal battles to resolve that thorny question?

(5) Another M2Z Fiasco? The Plan says the FCC will:

Consider licensing a block of spectrum with a condition to offer free or low-cost service that would create affordable alternatives for consumers, reducing the burden on USF.

Oh my, didn’t the FCC learn anything from the M2Z fiasco? You will recall that former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had his heart set on engineering a similar plan into existence, but he wanted the free wireless service to be squeaky-clean and filtered to weed out all the naughty bits. M2Z Networks had a plan to offer such a service that was slow as molasses but met the core condition of being free to the public (at least the basic, plain vanilla offering) and highly-filtered. Of course, the rather big catch was that before M2Z would give us The Net for Puritans, they wanted a big slice of juicy spectrum from the government at a greatly reduced lease rate. And Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) floated a similar proposal as part of her ” Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008,” (H.R. 5846).

Bottom line: Rigging auctions will inevitably be hugely controversial, even if it doesn’t include a censorship component.  But, in all likelihood, any plan by the FCC to subsidize a free or low-cost service along the lines of what M2Z already proposed will generate that sort of debate about what standards should govern content on that network. After all, many taxpayers will understandably protest that they shouldn’t have to subsidize content they find objectionable. Of course, the same might be said for other broadband subsidies proposed under The Plan, but when we’re talking about a free service required to be provided as a condition of a sweetheart spectrum deal (rather than simply lowering the cost of paid services), the political pressure for censorship will be difficult to surmount. (For more details, see this old paper by Berin Szoka and me, “What’s Worse Than Rigged Auctions & Internet Censorship? How About Both in One Package!” and this new article by Matt Lasar of Ars Technica, “Free Wireless Broadband Plan is déjà vu All Over Again.”)

Conclusion

No doubt, the FCC and its janissary will claim that each of these regulatory proposals has merit and deserves consideration. But if these provisions remain in the National Broadband Plan, I think the agency is setting itself and its supporters up for a long fight and, ultimately, a very disappointing outcome.  Some might claim that fortune favors the bold and that now is not the time for incrementalism. But this broadband plan would already be quite bold even without these controversial provisions included. For me, it’s just a bit too bold since I don’t believe the government has a very good track record when it comes to building high-tech networks or gauging demand for next generation services.  But regulatory shenanigans like the 5 discussed here could sink the plan and make the whole debate moot.

After working my way through the Executive Summary of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan, there are a number of things I find troubling that I will get to in a subsequent post. But here’s the thing about “The Plan” that I found most surprising — even audacious — in its arrogance: The FCC wants us to believe the whole scheme is costless. The agency bases this astonishing claim on the following assumptions:

Given the plan’s goal of freeing 500 megahertz of spectrum, future wireless auctions mean the overall plan will be revenue neutral, if not revenue positive.  The vast majority of recommendations do not require new government funding; rather, they seek to drive improvements in the government efficiency, streamline processes and encourage private activity to promote consumer welfare and national priorities. The funding requests relate to public safety, deployment to unserved areas and adoption efforts. If the spectrum auction recommendations are implemented, the plan is likely to offset the potential costs.

Let me translate: ” Pay no attention to all the bills we are racking up, because spectrum revenues shall set us free!”

Perhaps that logic works in the reality-free zone we call the Beltway, but back in the real world this simply doesn’t add up. Regardless of how well-intentioned any of these goals and proposals may be, it should be equally clear that there is no free lunch, even with spectrum auction proceeds fueling the high-tech gravy train. The proposals and programs the FCC sets forth will impose serious economic costs that shouldn’t be so casually dismissed, especially using the weak reasoning that “improvements in the government efficiency” will magically manifest themselves thanks to massive new government intervention in the field. (If you think you’ve heard this one before, you have. See: The current health care debate.)

Moreover, if everything really does hang on the promise of spectrum auction revenues covering the broadband spending binge, well, bad news: The agency is never going to bring in enough to cover what they’ve proposed here. The reason is simple: Most of the spectrum they want to grab is currently occupied by someone else! In fact, a huge chunk of that 500 megahertz would come from licensed television broadcasters, who aren’t exactly excited about getting and an eviction notice from the government. Even if one agrees with the FCC that the broadcast band is currently under-utilized, that doesn’t mean that the broadcasters should be forced to vacate it. Moreover, any attempt to force them off would result in an epic legal battle that would take years to resolve and ultimately would not likely be resolved in the government’s favor.

Of course, the folks at the FCC aren’t completely oblivious to these political realities. They know that they need to get the broadcasters to come to the bargaining table voluntarily to hammer out a deal.  But, as Barbara Esbin and I noted in our paper on this issue, there is one thing that will incentivze broadcasters to come to that table and talk turkey: Cold hard cash—and lots of it.  The FCC even admits as much when they note in the plan, “Mechanisms [for encouraging spectrum reallocation] include incentive auctions, which allow auction proceeds to be shared in an equitable manner with current licensees.”

But therein lies the folly of the FCC’s “broadband free lunch” scheme. They’re never going to be able to make both their masters happy. Both Congress and the broadcasters will want the spectrum auction revenue split to be something like 70-30 or 80-20, but both will demand the bigger slice of the pie. Thus, to get the broadcasters to the bargaining table, the FCC must make them a deal they can’t refuse. And that means that the spectrum auction revenues the agency predicts will cover all the costs of the National Broadband Plan will get eaten up by buyout checks for broadcasters. Finally, whatever proceeds are left after buying out the broadcasters will likely get thrown at a million other unfunded spending initiatives that Congress prefers over broadband.

So, something’s gotta give. There really is no free lunch.  Just like health care “reform,”  this FCC broadband plan will be anything but costless.

Details are starting to trickle out about the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan, which is due out tomorrow. Someone just posted the Executive Summary here. I haven’t had a chance to go through it all yet, but I’m looking forward to learning more about what the agency’s plans are on this front.

On Friday (again, before seeing any details), I offered some fairly mushy comments about the idea of national “plan” to the gang over at the excellent new site, FiveQsOnTech.com.  The site has a great format: Five questions on technology and policy asked and answered (usually on tape) by technology policy wonks. I’m honored to be among the first couple of experts featured on the site, along with Markham Erickson of the Open Internet Coalition and Rob Atkinson of ITIF.

In the first 3 minutes of this second of the two videos I appear in, I offered some thoughts about “The Plan”:

PFF has just released the transcript of an excellent panel discussion I moderated last week entitled, “Let’s Make a Deal: Broadcasters, Mobile Broadband, and a Market in Spectrum.”  As I’ve mentioned here before, one of the hottest issues in DC right now is the question of broadcast TV spectrum reallocation.  Blair Levin, who serves as the Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the Federal Communications Commission, recently raised the possibility of reallocating a portion of broadcast television spectrum for alternative purposes, namely, mobile broadband. Such a “cash-for-spectrum” swap would give mobile broadband providers to spectrum they need to roll out next generation wireless broadband networks while making sure broadcaster receive compensation for any spectrum they hand over.  The FCC just recently released a public notice on “Data Sought on Users of Spectrum,” (NBP Public Notice # 26) that looks into the matter. “This inquiry,” the agency says,” takes into account the value that the United States puts on free, over-the-air television, while also exploring market-based mechanisms for television broadcasters to contribute to the broadband effort any spectrum in excess of that which they need to meet their public interest obligations and remain financially viable.” Meanwhile, the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee is set to hold a hearing on the issue next Tuesday.

PFF’s panel discussion on this issue featured an all-star cast of characters, including opening remarks by Blair Levin, and a terrific discussion ensued. [You can hear the full audio from the event here.]  Down below I have highlighted some of the major points each speaker made during the discussion and also embedded the complete transcript in a Scribd reader.  Also, just a reminder that my PFF colleague Barbara Esbin and I authored a short paper on this issue recently: “An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Spectrum Reallocation That Can Benefit Consumers, Broadcasters & the Mobile Broadband Sector.”

• Blair Levin, Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, began the discussion by describing how additional spectrum will be needed to expand wireless broadband and why spectrum currently held by broadcasters would be a good option.  In addition to identifying spectrum that has the technical qualities to support broadband, he explained, “You also would look at things like where there’s an economic gap between the current use and potential wireless use.  You would want to look at bands where maybe there are regulations which constrain the market mechanism.  You also might want to look at bands where you can have a meaningful reallocation of spectrum while, nonetheless, preserving current uses.”
• Coleman Bazelon, Principal at The Brattle Group, presented findings from his recent paper on the value of spectrum currently held by broadcasters if it was reallocated to commercial mobile or wireless broadband uses. “This analysis shows that there are significant gains from reallocating the broadcast band, and I think the takeaway should be that there are significant gains, not that its $42 billion or $51 billion, but that its tens and tens of billions of dollars,” Bazelon stated.
• David Donovan, President of the Association for Maximum Service Television, Inc., questioned the estimates of the additional value of broadcast spectrum that could be gained if it was auctioned for other uses.  “If you are valuing over the air television broadcasting and its importance to the American public, using a snapshot based on an auction valuation at a particular point in time is really highly inappropriate,” he stated. “The business model of broadcasting is heavily regulated. … and that defines, of course, the value, just like heavy zoning defines the price of land.”
• Kostas Liopiros, Principal of The Sun Fire Group, discussed the technical feasibility of using various blocks of spectrum for wireless broadband use.  “Only additional spectrum can produce the required gains of capacity in the future, but if the gains capacities are oriented towards wireless broadband, for national wireless broadband capability, you need to focus on the right type of spectrum,” he explained.
• John Hane, Counsel in the Communications Practice Group of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, warned of the legal difficulties of modifying broadcast licenses.  “Extinguishing licenses requires a hearing, potentially hundreds of them, each one affecting one or more Congressional districts.”  Although the FCC is able to modify a license without the licensee’s consent, he continued, “that is a very long and complicated process with an uncertain time frame.  If there really is a spectrum crisis, the stick approach …is not going to solve it very fast.”
• Paul Gallant, Senior Vice President of Concept Capital, discussed the possible effects of Congress involvement in auction of broadcast spectrum.  If broadcasters are reluctant to modifying their business model, Gallant explained, it might be beneficial for them to have Congress involved in such a deal.  However, he warned that Congressional involvement could also result in uncertainty for the broadcasters.  “It is not clear, if Congress does pass a bill, whether broadcasters come out better or worse than they would if they had worked something out with the FCC.  The main reason is there is tremendous budget pressure in Congress today.  They are looking for new sources of revenue,” Gallant explained.
• Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President and CEO of Media Access Project, expressed that he was resistant to the idea of auctioning spectrum.  “It isn’t property,” He stated.  “They favor incumbents.  They’re rigged.  They don’t generate the revenues that OMB and Congress seem to think they will.” He also warned of the possible impact of auctions on innovation. “Auctions lock in existing technology and near-term foreseeable technology. The people who are able and willing to bid are basing it on technology that they know they can generate and that does not allow the spectrum to be used in better ways coming down the road.”

Transcript of Dec 1 PFF Event on Broadcaster TV Spectrum Reallocation [PFF – Thierer] http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=23980532&access_key=key-wdpoolnrm5gxq1xu7c6&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Along with my colleague Barbara Esbin, the Director of PFF’s Center for Communications and Competition Policy, I have just released a new paper on discussing the possibility of reallocating a portion of broadcast television spectrum for alternative purposes, namely, mobile broadband. As I discussed here before, Blair Levin, the Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, has been suggesting that it might be possible to craft a grand bargain whereby broadcasters get cash for some (or all) of their current spectrum allocations if they return spectrum to the FCC for reallocation and re-auction, likely to mobile broadband services.

In our paper, “An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Spectrum Reallocation That Can Benefit Consumers, Broadcasters & the Mobile Broadband Sector,” [PDF] Barbara and I argue that:

the benefits of such a deal could be enormous for wireless broadband providers, developers of digital technologies, and consumers.  Expanding the pool of spectrum available for next-generation wireless broadband offerings will ensure that innovative new networks, devices, and services are made available to the public on a timely basis.  Ultimately, that will mean more high-speed choices for consumers, especially those in rural areas harder to reach with high-speed wireline networks.  Finally, more generally, anything that moves us in the direction of a freer market in spectrum is a good thing. But fairness to broadcasters lies at the heart of this spectrum reallocation plan. If a deal can’t be structured that broadcasters would find acceptable, they should not be forced to come to the table. When we speak of an offer they can’t refuse, we mean one so attractive that no rational businessperson or investor would pass it up. It is essential broadcasters be willing partners in the deal, and be full participants in the process of shaping its contours.

Read the entire thing here, or below the fold as a Scribd document.

Broadcast TV Spectrum Reallocation (Thierer & Esbin – PFF) http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22365493&access_key=key-2cs1sry5qv9xd3x6d5bv&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Potentially huge FCC development here, and one they actually has some sense to it. According to Kim McAvoy over at TV News Check.com:

FCC broadband czar Blair Levin earlier this month met with leading TV broadcasters in Washington to discuss the nation’s urgent need for more spectrum for wireless broadband access to the Internet and the possibility of broadcasters’ relinquishing most of their spectrum to help meet that demand. According to sources familiar with the Oct. 8 meeting with the board of the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), Levin suggested broadcasters might want to consider returning their spectrum in exchange for a share in the billions of dollars that would come from the auction of the spectrum to the wireless industry. Broadcasting would retain just enough spectrum so that each station could provide a lifeline standard-definition service to the millions of TV viewers who still rely on over-the-air reception. Broadcasters could no longer offer over-the-air HD and second channels and mobile video would be off the table, but they could continue to provide a single channel of TV to every home in their markets as they do today — in full-blown HD via cable and satellite carriage and SD via the over-the-air lifeline service.

Wow, this is a very big deal, folks, since we are talking about a mother lode of prime spectrum that could be put to any variety of excellent alternative uses.  The problem is, broadcasters will—rightly, in my opinion—protest that they have occupied that spectrum for a long, long time and they have something akin to a property right in their allocations. Of course, paying them to relocate might be a very sensible way to get them off that spectrum voluntarily. But the question is whether they should be forced off of it and whether that is even legal.  No doubt, any attempt to force them off would be held up in court for many years because of inevitable legal challenges.

There is another solution: Just give the broadcasters a full, unencumbered property right in their spectrum and let them sell it or use it however they wish. Some will protest that it’s not “fair” and that the broadcasters should never be given a property right in something they did not pay for to begin with. Yet, at some point we have to stop the endless search for what I have referred to as a “spectrum reparations policy” and just get on with life.

I think everyone can now agree that the old command-and-control regulatory regime for “zoning” spectrum has retarded innovation. Imagine if we told Apple back in the 1980s that, because they started in the PC business, they could never leave the PC business and offer other innovations.  That would have been nuts! We’d never have the iPhone today. But that’s U.S. spectrum policy for broadcasting in a nutshell.  As a broadcaster, it is illegal for you to repurpose your spectrum for alternative uses.  Stated different, spectrum innovation is a crime.  How pathetic.

It’s time to change the rules and move forward.  I applaud Blair Levin and the FCC for offering at least one solution, but if it doesn’t work, we should try the other: property rights and flexible use rights in spectrum. And here are 4 or 5 other ways to get the job done.

Yesterday I testified before the Maryland General Assembly to oppose HB 114. It’s a bad bill for consumers and online companies, and another iteration of the continuing war that traditional retailers have waged against e-commerce for the past few years. Last year NetChoice testified before Congress to oppose legislation that would would give retailers the power to force online marketplaces to interrogate their own customers about how they obtained items listed for sale.

HB 114 would require Maryland businesses and residents selling cosmetics, medicines, baby food and infant formula via an Internet auctions to notify the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene at least seven days prior to the auction. The bill applies only to sales using Internet auctions, not fixed-price format, and not newspaper classified ads. That right there makes you wonder.

The bill has been introduced under the theory of product safety. Safeway, Target, and the state retailers association all trumped up the dangers of selling baby food and infant formula online without citing any sort of actual harm. Or at least harm that is disproportionate to what exists at the physical store retail level.

There was also a lot of desperate hyperbole. A representative from Mars supermarkets (a Maryland chain) asserted that Internet auctions fund heroin addiction! Yes, testifying before state legislatures can be fun!

When you have bill proponents demonizing the Internet, it’s easy to see that the bill is about competition prevention. Namely, to prevent Internet auction sites from benefiting Maryland consumers and helping businesses compete with traditional retailers in the sale of food and drug items.

Getting back to the window dressing of public health, if the bill’s proponents were truly concerned about consumer safety, they would advocate wider regulation on the sale of these consumer goods beyond just auctions. After all, flea markets, websites with fixed price listings, and newspaper classifieds all sell these same products.

A surprisingly large number of people and businesses earn a lot of money through online platforms like eBay and Overstock.com. Particularly for inventory that is about to expire, online auctions are a great way to get the best price in a short time period. With its 7 day waiting period, HB 114 would make it almost impossible for small businesses, distributors, and wholesalers to recover as much as they can on their investment in aging inventory.