Focus of the FCC in a Second Obama Administration: More Spectrum

The direction of the Federal Communications Commission during a second Obama Administration will be decided in two places: In the chairman’s office, which could have a new occupant next year, and in federal court, where cases are pending that challenge the FCC’s authority over broadband service, Internet traffic and wireless data.

Julius Genachowski, the FCC chairman since 2009, made the expansion of broadband service a priority during his tenure, but the next chairman will face formidable foes in efforts to free up more airwaves, or spectrum, for use by wireless phone companies. Two of the biggest potential sources of repurposed spectrum are television broadcasters and the military, and neither has eagerly embraced the prospect of giving up or sharing significant swaths of their current airwaves. Telecommunications companies have challenged the FCC’s authority to adopt rules governing how Internet service providers manage their networks and enforce what is known as network neutrality. Also under fire are FCC rules that require big companies like AT&T and Verizon to offer use of their data networks to customers of competing companies while they are roaming out of their service area. And small, rural phone companies are fighting the commission’s right to overhaul the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes for otherwise-uneconomical rural phone service, for use to build broadband networks. All three cases are pending before federal appeals courts.

Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, said that because the cases all dealt with next-generation communications, if the FCC were to lose all three of three cases, “we could be looking at an agency that’s almost irrelevant.”