Congress Lets The FCC’s Spectrum Auction Authority Lapse For No Good Reason

Last week, Congress failed to shake off corruption and buckled to a telecom industry’ smear campaign to scuttle the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC. This week, the government body shifted from corruption to ordinary incompetence, after it failed to renew the FCC’s Spectrum Auction authority for no coherent reason.

The FCC is in charge of managing our scarce wireless spectrum troves on behalf of its technical and rightful owner, the American public. For the last thirty years, like clockwork, Congress has renewed the agency’s authority to manage and auction this important resource. Until last week when Congress just… couldn’t be bothered to get around to it:

“Yesterday, for the first time since the agency gained this authority 30 years ago, Congress failed to extend it when the Senate refused to act. The House did its work – we unanimously passed a bipartisan bill introduced by me and Chair Rodgers last month to extend the spectrum auction authority to May 19th. Our legislation would have prevented this lapse in authority.”

Unlike the Sohn scrum, which was basically just Congress being too fucking corrupt to function in the public interest, nobody, anywhere (including industry), actually wanted the FCC’s spectrum auction authority to lapse. Yet it did thanks to what appears to be dumb, pointless wrangling:

Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., the sponsor of legislation that would extend the FCC authority until Sept. 30, and co-sponsor Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii, sought unanimous consent to pass their legislation Thursday, but Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., objected.

Welch supported an extension through May 19, the date included in a bill the House passed last month, spokeswoman Emily Becker said. She said the longer extension would have been a disincentive to a swift agreement on behalf of consumers, saying the public interest would be better served if Congress and stakeholders arrived at an agreement as quickly as possible.

So, as it currently stands, the FCC still lacks a voting majority to do much of anything meaningful or controversial because Congress buckled to a bad faith industry smear campaign against a popular reformer. Now the FCC lacks the authority to manage wireless spectrum because a dumb, pointless dispute by a handful of Senators.

Consumer groups were quick to note that this is a bit of a pattern when it comes to federal telecom oversight and regulatory competency lately. Government continues to throw billions of dollars at a “digital divide” lawmakers claim is a top priority, yet lawmakers can’t seem to do basic things to ensure the nation’s top telecom and media regulator has the staff or authority needed to do its job.