Message To Congress: With All Due Respect, If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It

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[Commentary] With an approval rating that is heading for sub-zero, Congress would do well to take this advice on many subjects. But the one topic I'm focusing on -- as the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission -- is just this: please do not tell the FCC how to auction spectrum.

If there is one thing that all should agree that the much-maligned FCC has done well since the early 1990s, under Democratic and Republican chairs, it is spectrum auctions. Yet this is the one thing the Republican majority wants to condition, limit and micromanage, and almost certainly foul up. The bill that passed the House earlier this week would tell the FCC how to sell spectrum. It would tell the FCC who should be allowed to bid. It would tell the FCC not to grant spectrum for the unlicensed uses that include, for example, the way many people use Wi-Fi to connect from their laptop to a router in or near their cable box. It would even tell the FCC how to hold auctions. In all these respects, Congress would break, by pretending to fix, the methods and techniques that the FCC has perfected, for the benefit of the taxpayers and to the envy of every spectrum agency in the world.


Message To Congress: With All Due Respect, If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It