February 2012

While a new law gives the Federal Communications Commission the authority to sell more spectrum licenses to private companies, former FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus said that limits placed by Congress could limit the amount of available spectrum in the end.

“New spectrum legislation obviously holds a lot of promise, but there are a lot of restrictions that Congress put on the FCC,” he said at an event hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. After nearly three years of developing and enacting policies under Chairman Julius Genachowski, the FCC is entering a phase where it will face challenges implementing policies like auctioning spectrum, Lazarus said. Lazarus, who left the FCC on Jan. 31, said that during his tenure, the agency took steps to increase broadband adoption, to free up wireless spectrum, and to enact network neutrality rules to prevent anticompetitive behavior online. Now, after phases of developing plans and building a foundation of policies, the FCC needs to put these plans and policies into practice he said. Lazarus sees managing spectrum in a way that will benefit consumers, companies, and the government's wallet as a delicate balancing act. “Driving public interest is not always the same as driving revenue maximization,” he said. Lazarus also pointed to legal and congressional challenges to the FCC's authority and debates over wireless competition, noting those as areas where the agency will be tested as it seeks to manage spectrum. In the wake of the FCC’s decision to block AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile, Lazarus said there is no “magic number” of companies that will ensure a competitive wireless market. Instead, regulators must look at how companies are acting, he said.

Verizon Wireless is purchasing Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox to ensure that our customers get the fast, reliable service they expect from their 4G devices. This purchase is clearly in the public interest. It puts unused spectrum into the hands of 109 million consumers who will use it for high-quality wireless broadband service on Verizon’s 4G LTE-enabled smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

But why does Verizon need more spectrum? The answer has become one of the big policy debates in Washington and across the country: the coming spectrum crunch. As more and more consumers use more and more wireless devices, additional spectrum capacity is needed for video-streaming, video-chatting, music, video and other content downloads, and any number of applications that require fast and reliable wireless broadband connections. Today, we serve approximately 109 million wireless connections, more than any other wireless provider in the U.S. Those connections are serviced with a nationwide spectrum license base that averages 88 megahertz of spectrum. That means, on average, Verizon uses one megahertz of spectrum to serve 1.2 million customer connections. Should the AWS spectrum transfer be approved, these wireless connections would be served using an average of 109 MHz nationwide, with one megahertz of spectrum serving almost one million customer connections. Verizon is 2-times more efficient with our spectrum than T-Mobile. While Verizon Wireless services 109 million connections with an average of 88 megahertz, T-Mobile has 50 MHz to serve 33 million customers. Both Verizon and T-Mobile have spectrum licensed nationwide, which means, as I mention above, Verizon serves 1.2 million customers on average per megahertz, while T-Mobile serves only half that with 660,000 per megahertz.

The data-privacy framework unveiled by President Obama has received near-universal praise from privacy advocates. At the very least, they say, it represents a good start and proves that the Administration is serious about protecting privacy rights as they apply to how businesses collect and use personal data. The only drawback is that while the administration is calling for Congress to enact a "privacy bill of rights," the actual Bill of Rights is nowhere to be found in the announcement. The framework targets only the private sector's activities, not the government's. Given the increasing Constitutional leeway the government has granted to itself on data searches, wiretapping and the like, it's not surprising that privacy advocates are a little taken aback by the difference in how the Administration is treating the public and private sectors.

Last week Foxconn pushed its starting salaries up from 900 yuan ($143) to 1,800 yuan per month, the latest and biggest in wage upticks that began in 2010. Foxconn did this for one main reason: international attention focused on the firm and associated ethical questions surrounding its treatment of workers.

The lens through which this attention was focused bears just one name – Apple -- because the iPhone seller is one of the biggest companies in the world, and has recently made very bold steps to improve worker conditions. But Foxconn is actually a key supplier for a laundry list of international electronics firms, from Samsung to numerous household American names. Now two of those firms, tech giants HP and Dell, have warned that rising costs in their Chinese supply chain may result in increased in-store prices for their wares.