We filed comments with the FCC yesterday on the proposed purchase of 122 AWS spectrum licenses by Verizon Wireless that are currently held by a group of cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, and Brighthouse. In aggregate, the licenses cover a 20MHz national footprint, about 10% as much spectrum as Sprint/Clearwire has today. The cable companies purchased the licenses in order to build a mobile broadband network that would compete with AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, but soon discovered...

If you want to understand how problematic our spectrum allocation practices are in the United States, you need look no further than the kerfuffle around the transfer of Channel 55 licenses from Qualcomm to AT&T. The transfer should be a no-brainer: Qualcomm isn’t using the spectrum and AT&T has an immediate need for it. Qualcomm bought their licenses fair and square, and they’re happy with the price AT&T is willing to pay. The new use is similar to the old use in all the relevant technical...

I’ve written a column for CNET on spectrum policy, "Meeting the need for spectrum," addressing some of the arguments we hear about spectrum demand and supply. Some advocates insist that the demands of mobile broadband users for increased data capacity can be met without allocating the additional spectrum recommended by the National Broadband Plan, but that’s not realistic. While it’s certainly true that spectral efficiency has steadily increased for the past 100 years, the rate at which...