A bitter clash at the FCC is gumming up one of the most important issues in tech right now

Bowing to pressure from Republican Representatives, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler won't be holding a hotly anticipated vote on rules for a looming, high-stakes auction of wireless airwaves. TV industry advocates say the real reason the vote fell apart was because Chairman Wheeler couldn't find enough Democratic votes to move ahead, in an indication of how fragile the FCC's Democratic majority can sometimes be. The discord, according to those advocates, stems from fears that the draft auction rules could unintentionally lead to interference between mobile devices.

The FCC's proposal would have considered relocating some TV station channels into this gap. Mainly, these stations would be the ones that decided not to give up their airwaves to cell service providers such as Verizon and AT&T. But some within the FCC, such as FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, worried that plan would render some mobile technologies unusable, said Preston Padden, a former Disney executive who now leads a coalition of TV stations interested in selling their airwave rights. But because the FCC is not offering enough money to TV stations to entice them to sell, the FCC "is saying, 'Oh no, we're going to have to jam broadcasters in [the duplex gap] and that's what caused the fight," said Padden, whose coalition members would benefit from a higher auction price. (The auction works by having the government buy up the TV stations' airwave rights and then reselling them to cellular carriers.) Padden claimed that if the FCC offered 5 percent more money to broadcasters, more of them would agree to sell -- and fewer would need to be relocated. "They're being penny wise and pound foolish, and that's why they've got this problem," said Padden.