Genachowski: 'We Need Incentive Auction Law, Now'

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 1/23/2012

LAS VEGAS — Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski said the country needs to come together to support universal broadband adoption by the end of the decade.

Genachowski, who was interviewed by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president Gary Shapiro during International CES, said to do that the country needs incentive spectrum auctions to free up more space for wireless Internet service.

“We need ubiquitous broadband,” he said. Genachowski said that since being appointed to the FCC, he has directed the agency “on a mission of harnessing the power of broadband internet to drive economic growth and benefit all Americans.”

In walking the floors of CES, he said the show presented more than 3,000 companies, with virtually every product on the floor fueled by wired and wireless broadband Internet.

“If you shut off the Internet, virtually nothing on the CES floor would work,” he observed, adding the value of almost every device at the show goes up as bandwidth goes up.

Genachowski said he believes that “if we don’t create innovation zones based on massive broadband in the U.S., other countries surely will,” and capital and jobs will flow in that direction.

He said incentive spectrum auctions will help generate badly needed spectrum to close the gap of the nearly 100 million Americans who do not have broadband at home today.

Universal broadband adoption is necessary, he said, “so that every American will take advantage of our 21st century communications platform, for finding and landing jobs, for connecting to education in and out of the classroom, for taking health care information and participating in the community.”

The commission has already taken steps to remove some of the barriers to wired and wireless broadband build out, by encouraging public and private initiatives to drive the industry.

The efforts, he said, will help generate 100,000 broadband-enabled customer-service jobs in the next two years, he said.

“The opportunities of a broadband economy are huge, and so are the challenges,” Genachowski said, with the greatest opportunities and challenges coming from mobile broadband.

“We now have the most 3G subscribers in the world,” he said, and “we have a strong early lead in getting to scale in 4G.”

“Private investment in a mobile broadband economy is up by double-digit percentages, driving real job creation with projections for even greater job creation over the next few years,” he said.

Incentive auctions, Genachowski said, will encourage spectrum holders to turn in bandwidth that can be auctioned off, generating some $25 billion for the Treasury. “We need to get it done now, and we need to get it done right,” he urged.

Genachowski pointed out that the U.S. was the first country to free up white space from unlicensed spectrum.

The FCC, he said, has sounded the alarm about a “spectrum crunch” for three years, and nowhere is there a bigger crunch than at CES this week.

Without incentivized spectrum auctions, Genachowski warned demand will swell and slower speeds and higher prices will result, as innovators turn to other countries, taking jobs and innovation with them.

Congress is to make a decision on a law enabling the FCC to proceed with incentive auctions by March 1. “At stake is U.S. leadership in mobile,” Genachowski said.

He pointed out that wireless carriers now embrace Wi-Fi as part of their networks.

Genachowski also challenged “myths” that the Internet has helped lose jobs, correcting that the Internet creates 2.6 jobs for every job it eliminates, and does so all over the country — not just in Silicon Valley.