WASHINGTON-House and Senate Republican budget bills envision billions of dollars in telecommunications revenue from expanded auctions, higher user fees and additional pioneer’s preference license payments in coming years.
Both chambers intend to balance the U.S. budget by 2002, a lofty goal requiring federal spending cuts of at least $1 trillion during the next seven years.
The fact that the Clinton administration also wants to give the Federal Communications Commission more leeway in selling the public airwaves bodes well for getting broader auction authority enacted into law this year.
Today, spectrum auctions are limited to commercial, subscriber-based services like paging, cellular, personal communications services and specialized mobile radio. Changes under consideration would extend auction authority beyond 1998 and permit the FCC to bid away private wireless spectrum and possibly even phone numbers.
Presumably, only broadcasting channels would be protected. Before losing control of both houses last fall, the Democratic-led Congress in 1993 made auctions the licensing tool of the future. To date, the FCC has raised $9 billion from the sale of PCS and other wireless licenses.
The House believes it can generate $15 billion from new auctions and $567 million from increased user fees over seven years. Currently, regulatory user fees account for $116.4 million of the FCC’s $185.2 million budget in fiscal 1995. The agency would be fully self-funded next year if higher user fees are approved.
The Senate, meanwhile, desires recipients of pioneer’s preference wireless licenses to fork over more money to the federal government.
“We’re going to try to convince fair-minded people that this isn’t right,” said Wayne Schelle, chairman of American Personal Communications.
APC, Omnipoint Corp. and Cox Enterprises Inc. each received broadband PCS licenses for achieving breakthroughs in wireless technology. Originally, pioneer’s preference permits were awarded free, but pressure from Congress and certain regional Bell telephone companies prompted the FCC to charge a discounted price for them.
The licenses were further discounted as part of a deal between pioneer winners and the White House last year to help underwrite the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Agreement, which sparked loud and angry protests by Pacific Telesis Group and conservative groups.
To salvage GATT, the White House and then-Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., agreed to revisit pioneer’s preference license valuations after the broadband PCS auction that concluded in March.
The three firms cumulatively paid $700 million for licenses in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., while bidders spent more than $1 billion altogether for licenses in the same markets.
The House budget bill did not include a pioneer’s preference provision because of legal problems cited by the Congressional Budget Office.
Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corp., which won a narrowband PCS pioneer’s preference license that was not tied to GATT, has challenged in federal appeals court the FCC’s authority to charge for licenses. Other lawsuits argue the pioneer’s preference payment arrangement in GATT is illegal.
Extracting money from spectrum is one of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on in an otherwise bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.
The White House and congressional Democrats, laying back and hoping to stir up trouble for Republicans in advance of next year’s presidential election, assert GOP budget plans help the rich at the expense of the poor, elderly and young.
To which House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, responds, “Where’s your plan to balance the budget and reduce the size and scope of government?” Yet, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds many Americans disenchanted with both Republican budget measures.
The final budget resolution that emerges from Congress will lay the foundation for detailed work on spending and deficit reduction bills by authorization and appropriation panels throughout the summer.
The Senate, meanwhile, desires recipients of pioneer’s preference wireless licenses to fork over more money to the federal government.
“We’re going to try to convince fair-minded people that this isn’t right,” said Wayne Schelle, chairman of American Personal Communications.
APC, Omnipoint Corp. and Cox Enterprises Inc. each received broadband PCS licenses for achieving breakthroughs in wireless technology. Originally, pioneer’s preference permits were awarded free, but pressure from Congress and certain Bell telephone companies prompted the FCC to charge a discounted price for them.
The licenses were further discounted as part of a deal between pioneer winners and the White House last year to help underwrite the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which sparked loud and angry protests by Pacific Telesis Group and conservative groups.
To salvage GATT, the White House and then-Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., agreed to revisit pioneer’s preference license valuations after the broadband PCS auction that concluded in March.
The three firms cumulatively paid $700 million for licenses in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., while bidders spent more than $1 billion for licenses in the same markets.
The House budget bill did not include a pioneer’s preference provision because of legal problems cited by the Congressional Budget Office.
Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corp., which won a narrowband PCS pioneer’s preference license that was not tied to GATT, has challenged in federal appeals court the FCC’s authority to charge for licenses. Other lawsuits argue the pioneer’s preference payment arrangement in GATT is illegal.
Extracting money from spectrum is one of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on in an otherwise bitter budget battle on Capitol Hill.
The White House and congressional Democrats, hoping to stir up trouble for Republicans in advance of next year’s presidential election, assert GOP budget plans help the rich at the expense of the poor, elderly and young.
To which House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, responds, “Where’s your plan to balance the budget and reduce the size and scope of government?”
The final budget resolution that emerges from Congress will lay the foundation for detailed work on spending and deficit reduction bills.
