{"id":20564,"date":"2014-04-22T15:11:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T19:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20564"},"modified":"2014-04-22T15:13:41","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T19:13:41","slug":"fcc-micromanagement-of-spectrum-auction-could-blow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20564\/fcc-micromanagement-of-spectrum-auction-could-blow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"FCC Micromanagement Could “Blow Up” Planned Spectrum Auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does the federal government have too little on its plate these days, or too much?\u00a0 The American public is unequivocal on that question, with a record 60%<\/a> telling Gallup that bureaucrats are wielding too much power.\u00a0 Only 7% say “too little.”<\/p>\n

Despite that ugly reality, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeks to increase its level of micromanagement over our telecommunications market.\u00a0 The auction of spectrum from television stations to wireless carriers is obviously long overdue, and ideally would improve service quality and speed within that growing market.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the FCC intends to limit participation in bidding on highly valuable low-frequency airwaves by excluding the largest and most successful carriers in many markets.\u00a0 As Bret Swanson observes<\/a> at TechPolicyDaily.com, that threatens to “blow up” the entire auction:<\/p>\n

Because the auction depends on inducing the broadcasters to give up their spectrum in the first place, if two of the largest prospective bidders are limited, or sit out entirely, the whole thing could blow up.\u00a0 Without the two largest bidders, prices are likely to be much lower, and broadcasters might say, no thanks.\u00a0 No broadcaster participation, no new spectrum for new mobile innovations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The wireless industry has brought innovation scarcely imaginable even five years ago, but that vitality will be jeopardized if bureaucrats pursue this sort of overregulation and abandon the regulatory light touch approach.\u00a0 As Swanson ominously notes:<\/p>\n

The FCC is about to take a huge risk with a hugely successful U.S. industry.\u00a0 It\u2019s also openly favoring and disfavoring specific firms, something U.S. law used to try to avoid.\u00a0 The added irony, although it shouldn\u2019t matter in a country that values the Rule of Law, is the favored firms are both foreign and the two disfavored are domestic.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead if new FCC micromanagement, what we need is an open and fair incentive auction.\u00a0 Allowing the market to work, unencumbered by such bureaucratic arbitrariness, will unleash more of the profound potential that the wireless marketplace possesses to spark new social, economic and technological realities for America’s consumers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does the federal government have too little on its plate these days, or too much?\u00a0 The American public is unequivocal on that question, with a record 60% telling Gallup that bureaucrats are wielding too much power.\u00a0 Only 7% say “too little.” Despite that ugly reality, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeks to increase its level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[188,4491],"class_list":["post-20564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-fcc","tag-spectrum-auction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20564","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20564"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20568,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20564\/revisions\/20568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}