White House, Senate Armed Services Feared 'Aggressive' Spectrum Proposal Goals, Thune Says
National security concerns from a host of stakeholders delayed for a second time the Senate Commerce Committee markup of the wide-ranging package of spectrum and broadband deployment measures known as Mobile Now, senior senators involved in the negotiations told us Tuesday. Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., wrote the spectrum package and had hoped to mark it up in November and then again as part of this week's Wednesday markup. But there’s bipartisan belief that the measure can advance early in the new year.
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Interested parties in communication with Thune’s office for weeks now include the White House through NTIA, the Department of Defense, the Senate Armed Services Committee and several members of Thune’s committee. The Satellite Industry Association slammed provisions that would have applied sharing rules to the 3700-4200 MHz band (see 1511130036), also a concern from the administration. Circulated Mobile Now drafts have sections specifying the federal government must free up 50 MHz by 2024, on wireless siting, on providing incentives for reallocation of federal spectrum, on goals for freeing up future spectrum for auction, on support for dig once policies and more.
The administration feedback was “a little slow coming,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “We’re trying to make some modifications to the bill that reflect what we think are good suggestions. So some of those came from the administration, some of them came from other committees. But I think the bottom line is we want to make sure that when we put the bill out, it’s something that we can not only be proud of, that we can pass, but that can hopefully make a difference and take into consideration all the other issues that have been raised, including some of the national security issues that our members and the administration are concerned about -- and rightly so.”
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is also on Armed Services and warned of possible security concerns of spectrum legislation during a November markup session that didn’t feature Mobile Now. “There were some national security issues that we had to address, but I think they’ll be resolved,” Nelson said in an interview Tuesday. “Because they’re national security, I can’t talk about it.” When asked if those concerns involved interference, as a senior GOP Commerce Committee staffer told us last month of Armed Services objections, Nelson said, “Basically, yes.” He couldn’t think of any other major concerns he had with Mobile Now beyond that.
“Without getting into the particulars, let’s just say that I think the White House had, as did Armed Services Committee, some of our colleagues up here, some concerns about some of the things that we were trying to do, how aggressive we were in terms of our goals,” Thune said of the current negotiation process. “So we’re making some changes in some of the band ranges that we were talking about as well. … I don’t know that there’s a [new] draft out that’s circulating per se. I think that there’s a draft in process that’s underway.”
Both GOP and Democratic leadership of Armed Services have negotiated these provisions, although sometimes on a staff level. “I have not been real engaged in it,” Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., told us Tuesday. “It’s on the staff level.” McCain said last month that he wants to work with Thune to free up more spectrum. Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., “has been working with the Commerce Committee and the Department of Defense to ensure national security concerns are understood as the bill moves forward,” his spokesman said Tuesday.
An industry official tracking the legislation told us the proposal as written is “highly controversial” due to the language on 3700-4200 MHz, and said the proposal’s content matters much more than its timing. Both the satellite industry and the Department of Defense object to that language, the industry official said. He singled out sections 11 and 12 as serious problems and “just the tip of the iceberg.” Section 11 contains the language on 3700 MHz and is titled “Reports on 3 gigahertz bands” and Section 12 would compel the FCC to do what it terms the millimeter wave rulemaking, according to the second draft of Mobile Now that circulated last month. Section 12 would require the FCC “not later than June 30, 2017” to, working with NTIA, “conduct a rulemaking proceeding to develop service rules to authorize mobile and fixed terrestrial wireless operations, including for advanced mobile service operations” in the MHz bands between 24250-24450, 25050-25250, 31800-33400, 42000-42500, 71000-76000, 81000-86000 and “any other frequency bands between 6000 megahertz and 90000 megahertz that the Commission considers appropriate,” that draft text said. Committee staffers ultimately lacked any choice about the markup postponement, the official said.
A Democratic Senate staffer affirmed bipartisan interest and ongoing discussion about marking up a spectrum bill as soon as possible. The staffer argued that unlicensed should be a key part of any spectrum package. The office of Senate Communications Subcommittee Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is talking with all interested parties about his Promoting Unlicensed Spectrum Act (S-2278) that he hopes to file as an amendment to Mobile Now during markup (see 1511120046), the staffer said Tuesday.
Expect Mobile Now to likely advance once Congress returns in January, Thune and Nelson told us. “I would not be surprised that it’s on deck for January,” Nelson said. “In the end, we’ll have a good bill, we’ll have a strong bill, and this is just a process that we have to work through,” said Thune. “It wasn’t quite ready for this week.”