Senate Bill Authorizes Inducement Auctions; Offers Broadcasters A Few Protections

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Jun 15, 2011 5:10 PM

The Senate Commerce Committee June 8 granted legislation giving the FCC the control to actions intentional inducement auctions directed at open space constant swaths of spectrum.

The principal target of the legislation, Senate bill S.911, is to set aside 10MHz of spectrum for public safety use and to lay the grounds for a national, interoperable wireless broadband network to encounter the needs of initial responders.

For the nation's TV broadcasters, the bill is critical since it contains denunciation giving the FCC control to grip inducement auctions, a power FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has mentioned is necessary if the group is to encounter the goals it has laid out for open space 120MHz of TV spectrum as envisioned in its National Broadband Plan.

The bill prevents the group from forcing a radio broadcaster to involuntarily let go spectrum to be used in an inducement auction. It moreover gives the assignment the control to retrieve spectrum protected to TV broadcasters to bring out an inducement auction usually if the same amount of constant spectrum, located between channels 14 and 50, in the same geographic market, is reclaimed from channels between 14 and 51. Likewise, the denunciation covers channels located between 2 and 13.

The bill prevents the assignment from involuntarily co-locating multi-part TV licenses on the same duct and categorically states that the channels willingly selecting to share a duct keep their coach rights.

The bill moreover authorizes the assignment to scatter a few of the deduction of spectrum auctions to stations "for the purposes of relocating to any substitute magnitude or location" directed towards by the commission.

The bill gives the assignment a few belligerent manners to follow when repacking the TV spectrum. It directs the assignment to "make in accord with efforts " to sustain the amount of race covered by a licensee's vigilance in its service area; to prevent increased interference to the licensee's signal; and to, where possible, assign channels 2 by 6 to relocation channels in the UHF rope if possible.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, likely last Senate lane inside of the next few months.