House Communications Subcommittee to Hold Hearing on Federal Spectrum

The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Communications
Subcommittee will hold a hearing next month on commercial use of government
spectrum.

Federal agencies are being asked by the Obama Administration
to give up or share some of their spectrum in the push for more bandwidth for
commercial wireless broadband and subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.)
also wants to talk about how to free up more federal spectrum for commercial
use.

The
committee,
of which Walden is a member ex officio, has its own working
group on the issue and Walden said Tuesday after a series of meetings, the
committee had decided to schedule a September hearing -- no date has been set
or witnesses announced. 

"As the single largest spectrum user, the federal
government could save taxpayers money and make more frequencies available to
meet American consumers' growing demand for mobile broadband services,"
Walden said in announcing the hearing.

The committee was active in the passage of legislation to
authorize incentive auctions to reclaim spectrum from broadcasters to help free
it up for wireless broadband and other uses. The bill also directed the federal
government to find its own spectrum to reclaim for commercial wireless use.

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.