Senators Hope for September Spectrum Legislation Compromise

Wireless Future Project director Michael Calabrese is quoted in a Communications Daily article about how Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell and other panel leaders are hoping to negotiate a deal on a spectrum legislative package in early September, remarking that he would like to see a deal beyond an 18-month extension.

New America Open Technology Institute Wireless Future Program Director Michael Calabrese would welcome a deal that goes past an 18-month extension. That “would be nothing but an agreement to kick the can down the road” that’s “clearly intended to just delay” work on a more comprehensive spectrum package in the hope that Republicans will win back control of the House in the November elections, Calabrese told us. “The best policy is to combine a requirement for them to study and report back” to Congress within a set amount of time “on what can be auctioned or made available or unlicensed sharing” and then allocate “enough time to actually move forward with those plans.”

There’s “no magic formula” for an optimal longer-term compromise extension, but it should be “long enough that the FCC and NTIA can actually plan a portfolio of bands that make both additional licensed and unlicensed spectrum” available, Calabrese said: It should give the agencies a “strong nudge to do the work and report back” to Congress expeditiously. A five-year extension could be “long enough to require the FCC and NTIA to work together” to identify available bands and “then the committees could take further action” within two or three years afterward, he said.

Senate Commerce leaders can easily complete work on a compromise bill before Labor Day by cobbling together language that “already exists” in current legislation, including HR-7624, Calabrese said. He cited the 2020 Spectrum Management and Reallocation for Taxpayers Act, an unsuccessful attempt by Cantwell and other lawmakers to designate the proceeds from the since-completed C-band auction for rural broadband and next-generation 911 tech upgrades (see 2001280063).