{"id":14577,"date":"2012-06-11T13:59:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T17:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=14577"},"modified":"2012-06-11T14:09:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T18:09:58","slug":"coalition-to-fcc-approve-verizonspectrumco-deal-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14577\/coalition-to-fcc-approve-verizonspectrumco-deal-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Coalition to FCC: Approve Verizon\/SpectrumCo Deal Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a letter<\/a> delivered on Friday, a coalition of 14 free market organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”), urged the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to approve a private deal between Verizon and cable companies that will free currently unused spectrum to help alleviate the growing \u201cspectrum crunch\u201d that many wireless consumers \u2013 particularly those in densely populated areas of the country \u2013 are already feeling.<\/p>\n

The letter, which was organized by ATR’s Digital Liberty<\/a>, reads in part:<\/p>\n

Demand for wireless broadband is more than doubling annually, but vast swaths of valuable spectrum \u2013 the lifeblood of mobile communications \u2013 remain unavailable to wireless carriers. Consumers in densely populated urban areas are already suffering from inadequate wireless capacity. While meeting this robust demand will require wireless carriers to adopt an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, increasing spectrum availability is unquestionably the most fundamental and cost-effective means to meet wireless demand.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, spectrum auctions that will enable wireless carriers to bid on additional spectrum remain years away. Verizon Wireless\u2019s proposed transfer presents a rare and crucial opportunity to deploy currently unused spectrum for wireless broadband. The spectrum at issue is ideally situated in the 1700\/2100 MHz AWS bands, covering over 80 percent of the U.S. population (259 million POPs). Consumers will see substantial net benefits from expanded coverage enabled by additional spectrum, especially compared to more costly and time-consuming undertakings such as cell splitting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With demand for wireless broadband more than doubling annually, the FCC\u2019s own estimates predict that demand for wireless spectrum will exceed supply in 2013.\u00a0\u00a0Yet Obama\u2019s FCC has done little if anything at all to make additional and\u00a0much-needed spectrum available to wireless network operators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, under the Obama Administration the FCC has worked to delay and outright block private-sector deals to alleviate the growing spectrum crunch.\u00a0 Last year, the FCC took unprecedented steps to block the then-pending AT&T-T-Mobile merger<\/a>, going so far as to publicly release a biased draft staff report in opposition to the merger that the\u00a0commissioners themselves never approved\u00a0and quite \u00a0possibly didn’t even read.\u00a0 Had that merger\u00a0been approved, AT&T\u00a0was promising\u00a0to deploy high-speed mobile broadband to 95 percent of all Americans.\u00a0 And the FCC has been over-scrutinizing<\/a> and slow-walking approval of the Verizon-SpectrumCo deal since December.<\/p>\n

Read the full coalition letter to the FCC here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a letter delivered on Friday, a coalition of 14 free market organizations, including the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”), urged the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to approve a private deal between Verizon and cable companies that will free currently unused spectrum to help alleviate the growing \u201cspectrum crunch\u201d that many wireless consumers \u2013 particularly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1039,188,346,3223,3228,3013,2309,2573],"class_list":["post-14577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-att","tag-fcc","tag-federal-communications-commission","tag-merger","tag-spectrum","tag-t-mobile","tag-verizon","tag-wireless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14577"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14591,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14577\/revisions\/14591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}