March 2010

Marvin Ammori, a professor of law and media/telecom expert at the University of Nebraska, asks Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski what he envisions the broadband market will look like in one decade.

NTIA announces that the new application closing deadline for the electronic submission of CCI projects under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) is extended until 10:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on March 26, 2010.

Google Inc. will shift its search engine for China off the mainland but won't shut it down altogether, and it will maintain other operations in the country. It's an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from an explosively growing Internet market.

On Monday afternoon, visitors to Google.cn were being redirected to Google's Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong. The page said, according to a Google translation, "Welcome to Google Search in China's new home." Google's attempt at a compromise could resolve a 21/2-month impasse pitting the world's most powerful Internet company against the government of the world's most populous country. Google plans to keep its engineering and sales offices in China so it can keep a technological toehold in the country and continue to sell ads for the Chinese-language version of its search engine in the US. But Google is still taking a risk. The revolt against censorship threatens to crimp Google's growth, particularly if taking the stand prompts the Chinese government to retaliate by making it more difficult for the company to do business in the country. The ruling party, for instance, could use its filters to block people on China's mainland from connecting with Google's Hong Kong-based service.

The Radio Spectrum Inventory Act (HR 3125) would require the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct an inventory of the license holders and users of certain frequencies of the radio broadcast spectrum. The agencies would be required to complete the inventory within one year of enactment of the bill and to make the results available to the public on the Internet. The bill would require the agencies to prepare two reports. The first, to present the results of the inventory, would be due two years after the date of enactment and would be updated biennially thereafter. The second, to provide recommendations by NTIA and the FCC of spectrum that should be reallocated or made available for sharing, would be due four years after enactment and would be updated every four years thereafter.

Based on information from NTIA and the FCC, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 3125 would cost $31 million over the 2011-2015 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. Most of that cost would be incurred to collect information about the users of each band of spectrum and update the databases that track that information. CBO estimates that costs to the FCC would total $15 million over the 2010-2015 period; costs to NTIA would be about $16 million over the same period. Further, under current law, the FCC is authorized to collect fees to offset the costs of its regulatory program; subject to appropriations action, CBO estimates that the FCC would collect $15 million in fees to offset the bill's costs. Therefore, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 3125 would increase net discretionary spending by $16 million over the 2011-2015 period. CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 3125 would increase net discretionary spending by $16 million over the 2011-2015 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.

Pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply to this legislation because it would not affect direct spending or revenues. H.R. 3125 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.