CTIA Plugs Need for Licensed Wireless Spectrum

CTIA: The Wireless Association posted a YouTube video Wednesday (July 29) promoting freeing up more spectrum for licensed wireless.

The post was timed to a Senate Commerce Committee hearing the same day, Wireless Broadband and the Future of Spectrum Policy, which was focused on improving spectrum policy to accommodate the "growing demands" for wireless broadband. It also comes as there has been a lot of focus at the FCC and elsewhere on freeing up unlicensed spectrum, which fuels the Wi-Fi that is cable operators' prime mobile broadband play.

The video asserts that the U.S. needs to free up more than 350 MHz more of "licensed" wireless spectrum by 2020 to fuel over $400 billion annual economic activity and 1.3 million jobs.

The video foreshadows the hearing testimony of CTIA president Meredith Attwell Baker.

"The backbone of our national spectrum policy should remain licensed and exclusive use spectrum," she says, according to a copy of her testimony. "It is our collective commitment to licensed spectrum that has made the United States the global leader in 4G."

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0KdmG312t0[/embed]

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.