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AT&T’s Next Move May Be Asset Sell-Off

November 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

ATT and T-Mobile’s corporate parent, Deutsche Telekom, acknowledged that the deal was in trouble in a Thanksgiving Day announcement. The companies said they had withdrawn, for now, their application to the Federal Communications Commission to join their cellphone operations. They also said that ATT would take a $4 billion charge against earnings — the amount in breakup fees owed to Deutsche Telekom if the deal is scrapped.

The companies portrayed the withdrawal of the F.C.C. application as a tactical move, after the commission chairman said earlier in the week that he would move to oppose the deal. The Justice Department filed an antitrust suit to block the merger in August.

Focusing on the antitrust trial, scheduled for February, the companies explained, would now be the first step. They vowed to continue to pursue their bold plan to combine the second- and fourth-largest cellphone carriers in the United States.

But the companies’ ambitions must be scaled back if they want any chance at a deal, analysts say. To address the objections of the Justice Department and F.C.C. that a merger would be anticompetitive, ATT could agree to sell off 40 percent or so T-Mobile’s assets to wireless rivals, they say.

The policy goal, analysts say, would be to strengthen wireless competitors beyond the big two, Verizon Wireless and ATT. So sales of mobile spectrum, cell towers and customers could not be made to Verizon, but to others, like Sprint and MetroPCS, the third- and fifth-largest carriers.

Or perhaps assets could be sold to a well-heeled foreign company that, unlike Deutsche Telekom, is increasing its investment in the United States: América Móvil, headed by the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú. Mr. Slim is a major shareholder in The New York Times Company.

Creative deal-making, analysts note, would be required to forge alliances and supply cash for spinoff purchases. The list of potential participants, they say, includes private equity firms, like SilverLake Partners, and cable companies, like Comcast and Time Warner, which own spectrum and whose Wi-Fi networks can work in tandem with cell networks.

Each of the options would present obstacles. And it is not clear that ATT would be interested in a drastically scaled-down deal. Yet the company has consistently argued that its main motivation for pursuing T-Mobile is to acquire scarce wireless spectrum, so ATT can quickly build out high-speed, next-generation network capacity to improve its service.

“If that is its goal, then ATT has to explore ways to salvage as much spectrum out of the deal as it can,” said Kevin Werbach, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a former technology policy official at the F.C.C.

To sell off 40 percent of T-Mobile’s assets, ATT would most likely have to make peace with rivals who have opposed the merger, like Sprint and MetroPCS, and offer these carriers favorable terms, said Kevin Smithen, an analyst at Macquarie Securities.

“The issue for ATT is whether gaining some market share and spectrum is worth handing over some of T-Mobile’s assets to the struggling third and fifth carriers,” Mr. Smithen said.

Private equity firms, analysts say, would mainly be interested in providing financing for others to buy spectrum assets, or in buying some assets and then reselling them. Such investment funds, they add, are not in the business of running companies.

América Móvil in Mexico is a candidate to buy T-Mobile assets, according to Berge Ayvazian, a telecommunications consultant. The company’s TracFone unit, which sells a flat-rate, prepaid service called Straight Talk, has been rapidly adding subscribers in the United States.

“The result,” Mr. Ayvazian said, “would be a healthy company that is growing around the world and in the United States, becoming the No. 4 competitor in this market.”

But other analysts noted that América Móvil, with its prepaid service, is a very different business than the traditional model of signing up subscribers on two-year contracts.

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Media Decoder Blog: Court Affirms ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ Ruling

November 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — Janet Jackson’s nipple just can’t seem to stay out of court.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday again threw out a $550,000 fine against CBS by the Federal Communications Commission for Janet Jackson’s famed “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia had issued a similar ruling in July 2008. But that decision was sent back to the appeals court in May 2009 by the Supreme Court after it ruled in a separate case that the F.C.C. had the right to hold broadcasters accountable even for unscripted and isolated foul language.

The appeals court heard a second round of arguments in the Janet Jackson case in February 2010. On Wednesday, it ruled that while the F.C.C. had the ability to police fleeting images — the nipple-baring episode was onscreen for nine-sixteenths of one second — the commission acted arbitrarily because it failed to announce that it had changed its policy until after it decided to punish CBS.

“The F.C.C. failed to acknowledge that its order in this case reflected a policy change and improperly imposed a penalty on CBS for violating a previously unannounced policy,” the appeals court said in a 2-to-1 decision written by Judge Marjorie O. Rendell and joined by Judge Julio M. Fuentes. Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica dissented.

The F.C.C. issued a statement but did not say whether it would appeal the decision.

“We are pleased that the court did not question the F.C.C.’s statutory responsibility to regulate indecent broadcasting,” the commission said. “While we are disappointed by the Court of Appeals’ decision, we note that the court overturned the F.C.C.’s 2006 forfeiture order on narrow procedural grounds. In the meantime, the F.C.C. will continue to use all of the authority at its disposal to ensure that the nation’s broadcasters fulfill the public interest responsibilities that accompany their use of the public airwaves.”

The case is CBS Corporation v. F.C.C., No. 06-3575.

The Supreme Court is set to hear further arguments this term in the case that caused the Janet Jackson decision to be sent back to the circuit court. That case, F.C.C. v. Fox Television Stations, No. 10-1293, concerns whether the F.C.C.’s policies banning nudity, expletives and other indecent content on broadcast radio and television violate the Constitution.

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F.C.C. Plans to Direct More Support to Broadband

October 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlined a plan to transform the Universal Service Fund, an $8 billion fund that is paid for by the nation’s telephone customers and used to subsidize basic telephone service in rural areas, into one that will help expand broadband Internet service to 18 million Americans who lack high-speed access.

The chairman, Julius Genachowski, said the overhaul of the fund would eliminate waste and inefficiencies in a program that is outdated, unfair and not accountable to the consumers who support it through monthly assessments on their phone bills.

An F.C.C. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid overshadowing the chairman’s address, said the amount that consumers paid each month to finance universal service was unlikely to fall and could increase. Phone companies are assessed a percentage of their revenue from interstate and international service, and most pass along those charges to customers. The contribution rate has more than doubled over the last decade, to 15 percent currently, up from 7 percent in 2001.

Telecommunications industry groups and consumer watchdog organizations offered cautious support for the plan. Though Mr. Genachowski presented an overview of a new system, he offered few details on how it would affect phone companies and broadband providers.

“Broadband has gone from being a luxury to being a necessity for full participation in our economy and society,” Mr. Genachowski said in a speech Thursday at the agency’s headquarters. “This plan will bring enormous benefits to individual consumers, our national economy and our global competitiveness.”

The plan would provide for broadband in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses beginning next year, Mr. Genachowski said, and would cut by half the number of Americans without broadband access by 2017. “And it will put us on the path to universal broadband service by the end of the decade,” he added.

The plan would transform the largest component of the fund, which provides $4.5 billion annually to subsidize residential phone service in rural areas that would otherwise be uneconomical for companies to serve.

The money would instead go to a new Connect America Fund, providing both wired and wireless Internet access to homes, businesses and “anchor institutions” like libraries and public service organizations.

Subsidies for landline telephone service will be phased out as broadband is expanded, but the F.C.C. chairman said he believed that the development of Internet-based phone services like Skype would supplant traditional telephones for many consumers.

For the first time, the Universal Service Fund will be put on an annual budget, rather than being allowed to spend freely, Mr. Genachowski said, and competitive bidding will be used to determine which companies receive subsidies — also a first.

Part of the money will be used to establish a Mobility Fund, which would extend and sustain the latest generation of mobile broadband service along and around more than 100,000 miles of roadways around the country, “where millions of Americans live, work and travel,” he said.

Also outlined Thursday were changes to the Intercarrier Compensation program, which provides subsidies for local phone companies through an assessment on long-distance calls.

That system, Mr. Genachowski said, “actually discourages investment in 21st-century Internet protocol networks, because companies fear losing the subsidies they receive for connecting calls using traditional telephone technology.”

Details on the full plan outlined by Mr. Genachowski are being circulated to the three other F.C.C. commissioners. They can suggest revisions and amendments to shape the final regulations, which will be voted on by the commission on Oct. 27.

Because of the lack of details, consumer and industry groups generally said they would have to review the final plan before reacting fully to the proposals.

“We applaud Chairman Genachowski for his commitment to connecting all Americans to high-speed broadband,” said Walter B. McCormick Jr., president and chief executive of USTelecom, a broadband industry trade association. “While we have some concerns with what he outlined today, we appreciate that he and his fellow commissioners are looking to find the right balance that will benefit consumers, advance the public interest, accelerate broadband investment and create jobs.”

Parul P. Desai, policy counsel for Consumers Union, similarly supported the initiative, but she said that the F.C.C. should not allow companies to raise the rates they charge for landlines, because many seniors and lower-income households will continue to depend on that service.

“Broadband companies are generating huge revenues while many consumers are struggling to make ends meet,” Ms. Desai said. “The F.C.C. shouldn’t allow the industry to pay for expansion on the backs of consumers.”

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Scandal Stirs U.S. Debate on Big Media

July 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

They say the British hacking scandal that has stained Mr. Murdoch’s reputation is an opportunity to raise awareness of — and, they hope, objection to — media consolidation at a time when the American government is reviewing the rules that govern how much companies like News Corporation, Comcast and the Walt Disney Company can own.

“For those of us who’ve been warning about the dangers of too much media power concentrated in too few corporate hands, this scandal is a godsend,” said Jeff Cohen, the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College.

The scandal is also giving Democratic lawmakers an opportunity to call for more attention to the practices of such companies.

Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat of Illinois and a past critic of Mr. Murdoch, questioned in an interview whether the media mogul had been allowed to amass too much media power. “We can’t forget the fundamental tenet of media ownership in the United States. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege. And it’s a privilege based on trust and responsibility,” he said.

Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat of Wisconsin, said that along with media consolidation, the scandal raised questions about “privacy expectations in the digital world” and about how “we support freedom of the press while ensuring the integrity and truthfulness of the press.”

There are few if any immediate threats to Mr. Murdoch’s American portfolio, which includes the Fox network, two dozen local television stations, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and the 20th Century Fox movie studio. The Federal Communications Commission signaled last week that it regarded the hacking scandal as isolated to Britain.

But the scandal in Britain could influence the F.C.C. review of media ownership rules, especially if there is perceptible public discord about powerful media moguls like Mr. Murdoch.

The discord is already evident in Britain, where politicians have talked openly about considering new laws that would lead to a breakup of the News Corporation, which owns 39 percent of British Sky Broadcasting as well as numerous newspapers there.

In the United States, politicians have called for investigations into whether News Corporation entities hacked into the phones of Americans, including the victims of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating; on Tuesday, Mr. Murdoch said that he was aware of no evidence that any 9/11 American victims had been affected.

But media reform groups like Free Press, which advocates for more diversity in media ownership, say their interest extends far beyond any single investigation.

“I think this is the moment to contend with the serious damage the Murdoch empire has done to our media system over the past few decades,” Craig Aaron, the head of that group, said last week.

The 2004 book “The New Media Monopoly” by Ben H. Bagdikian found that more than half of the radio and television stations, daily newspapers, magazines, publishers and movie studios in the United States were owned by five companies. In January, in the most recent case of consolidation, the government approved a bid by Comcast to take control of NBC Universal.

Proponents of media mergers say such combinations improve consumer access to news, information and entertainment. They say the Internet has fostered competition, creating new choices for consumers.

Groups like Free Press say the opposite — that such combinations reduce the country’s journalistic corps and decrease the diversity of voices in print and on the air. Mr. Aaron said he sensed that most Americans were aware of big media brands like Fox and NBC but unaware that their owners also controlled dozens of other brands. Media companies present an obstacle to awareness: “Most media outlets don’t like to cover themselves.”

But “when people find out just how much those companies own, they are worried about it and want to know more,” he said, adding that the who-owns-what chart was the most popular feature on the Free Press Web site.

This week, the F.C.C. declined to comment on the status of its ownership review, which is supposed to assess whether the existing rules are effectively promoting diversity, localism and competition. Earlier this month, an appeals court upheld most of the steps that the commission took in 2007 to loosen ownership rules, but it rejected on procedural grounds one rule that enabled more companies to own a newspaper and a station in the same local market.

Cable outlets like Fox News — the scourge of liberals and a symbol of Mr. Murdoch’s political power — are not under the purview of the F.C.C. or its ownership review, but the News Corporation’s 27 local stations are, because each is dependent on a federal license for use of the public airwaves.

License revocations are extremely rare, and analysts said they did not anticipate problems for the stations as a result of the hacking scandal. But an F.C.C. provision assessing the character of a station owner could be invoked by the News Corporation’s opponents when the company’s licenses for Fox and MyNetwork stations come up for renewal.

The broader problem for Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Aaron suggested, is that he “had an air of invincibility” before the scandal became one of the most talked-about news stories in Britain and the United States. “Whatever happens now, that’s gone,” he said.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the public interest group Media Access Project, said he doubted that loyal viewers of Fox News, a News Corporation property, would change their views.

But, he added, “a much larger group of people have an instinctive mistrust of powerful media, and they understand that consolidation of media ownership is not good for democracy.”

“For better or worse,” Mr. Schwartzman said, “News Corporation’s misdeeds will fuel that skepticism.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Big Names in Tech Back AT&T’s Bid for T-Mobile

June 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Randall Stephenson, the chief of ATT, during a Senate panel's hearing in May, with Daniel Hesse, right, of Sprint Nextel.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesRandall Stephenson, the chief of ATT, during a Senate panel’s hearing in May, with Daniel Hesse, right, of Sprint Nexte.

In its quest to win approval of its $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA, ATT just got a lot of help from its friends.

Eight technology giants, including Facebook and Microsoft, and 10 venture capital firms, filed letters supporting the acquisition late on Monday. The letters, filed with the Federal Communications Commission, lent their support to ATT’s argument that the T-Mobile deal will help the company extend its next-generation data network across the country, helping to meet the growing need for wireless broadband services.

“Many policy-related efforts will not be able to quickly address near-term capacity needs,” the Microsoft-led group wrote in its letter. “The F.C.C. must seriously weigh the benefits of this merger and approve it.”

The letters are the latest salvo in the fight over ATT’s effort to become the nation’s biggest cellphone service provider.

It is a fight that has pitted ATT against consumer groups and smaller rivals like Sprint Nextel. Sprint and other service providers have argued strenuously that the deal would revive the “Ma Bell” situation of old, leaving ATT and Verizon Wireless in a duopoly that controls most cellphone customers. Such a combination could lead to higher prices and reduced service, they say.

Sprint, the nation’s third-biggest carrier behind Verizon Wireless and ATT, has been the most outspoken opponent of the deal. “I am here because Sprint believes in competition, which goes hand in hand with innovation,” the company’s chief executive, Daniel Hesse, testified at a Senate hearing last month.

Both sides have been racing to enlist as many prominent supporters as possible. Sprint has found common cause with consumer groups, while ATT has lined up support from unions, particularly the Communications Workers of America. And both sides have sought political leaders to speak out.

The outpouring of support is taking place within the confines of reviews by the F.C.C. and the Justice Department, which are aimed at determining if the deal is in the public’s interest and whether it harms competition. The process may take about a year. The deadline to file supporting comments for the deal is Friday, while the deadline to file opposing comments was last week.

The letters filed Monday provide solid support for the deal from Silicon Valley. Other companies that have signed on are Yahoo, Oracle and the BlackBerry’s maker Research in Motion. The venture capital firms include Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Partners.

As smartphones and tablets proliferate, so too have apps like one by Facebook that draw in ever-rising amounts of data. Monday’s letters cite ATT’s contention that the T-Mobile deal will allow the carrier to expand its nascent 4G network to cover 97 percent of the country and an additional 55 million Americans.

“The access aspect of this is so, so important,” Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s vice president for United States government affairs, said by telephone. “We quickly came to the conclusion that this is a good merger.”

Promod Haque, a managing partner of Norwest Venture Partners, said in a telephone interview that constraints on network capacity were harming new mobile applications and offerings.

“The lack of adequate spectrum is killing the quality of users’ experience,” he said. “Customers say, ‘I can’t even get a phone call and can’t get adequate reception. So you want me to use this new service?’ ”

Allowing ATT to consolidate its network spectrum with T-Mobile’s is easier and more cost-effective than alternatives, Mr. Haque added.

Microsoft approached “a select few” technology companies to support the deal, mostly those whose products would obviously also benefit from wider data pipelines, and received quick and positive replies, Mr. Humphries said. The software giant also contacted several trade associations to which it belongs, letting them know of the company’s position.

While Microsoft and Research in Motion have signed the letter, other notable smartphone players whose offerings consume large amounts of data, like Apple, have not.

Some of the signers said that while they had considered Sprint’s arguments that the deal would harm both competition and innovation, they disagreed. Jon Auerbach, a general partner at Charles River Ventures, pointed to smaller competitors like Leap Wireless and “virtual network operators” like Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA as alternatives for consumers.

Mr. Auerbach and Mr. Haque also said that ATT had repeatedly shown a willingness to work with its portfolio companies. They argued that those business relationships showed a willingness by ATT to eschew existing technology in favor of new developments from unproven players.

“When a large provider is willing to take a bet on something that may not have the best balance sheet in the world or a long track record, that goes a long way,” Mr. Auerbach said. “ATT really wants to know what’s next.”

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AT&T and T-Mobile Chiefs Field Skeptical Questions on Capitol Hill

May 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The two companies did not show up as rivals on Wednesday, however, at a Senate hearing on the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by ATT.

Instead, the executives of ATT and T-Mobile, after standing with hands raised vowing to tell the truth, warned that without ATT buying T-Mobile, the growth potential of both companies was limited and their ability to meet customer demand for wireless Internet service was lacking.

Actually, the two companies said, they are not really competitors — an assertion that one senator finally found too much to bear.

“I mean, please,” said Senator Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the judiciary subcommittee for antitrust and competition issues.

“You both sell the same service, cellphone service, on a national basis,” Mr. Kohl said, looking at Randall L. Stephenson, the chairman and chief executive of ATT. “Is it really credible to come up here and sit here and tell us that you and T-Mobile are not close competitors?

Mr. Stephenson replied: “They’re not our competitive focus. I can tell you that.”

While forecasting their misfortune as unmerged entities, the chief executives of the both companies parried skeptical questions from other Democrats and competing telecommunications executives.

The proposal, which faces a nearly yearlong review from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, would create a carrier that controls an estimated 43 percent of the cellular-phone market.

Together with Verizon, the two companies would control close to 80 percent of the national market.

Those who looked skeptically on that potential dominance included Daniel R. Hesse, chief executive of print Nextel, a company that T-Mobile and ATT say is, in fact, a competitor.

Mr. Hesse repeated the argument he has voiced almost since the day ATT announced its purchase of T-Mobile. If regulators approve the deal, he said, “the wireless industry would regress toward a 1980s style duopoly.”

Mr. Hesse said he believed that the combination of the two companies would reduce to three, from four, the number of major national wireless carriers, a group that also includes Verizon. That would be only a prelude to a further consolidation to two companies, as his own company would find it difficult to compete with the reach of ATT/T-Mobile and Verizon.

“I am not here to ask for a special break or to seek any conditions in connection with this takeover,” Mr. Hesse said. “I am here because Sprint believes in competition, which goes hand in hand with innovation.”

Mr. Stephenson and Philipp Humm, chief executive of T-Mobile USA, said that they also believed in competition, and that the merger of their companies would do nothing to ease the battle for mobile phone subscribers.

“We expect increased competition and lower prices for all customers,” Mr. Humm told the subcommittee.

Republicans on the subcommittee expressed support for the deal. “I favor market approaches rather than government funding and intervention to build a national wireless network,” said Senator Michael S. Lee of Utah.

Regulators, Mr. Lee added, “must be guided by what is best for consumers in prices, in service, in quality and ultimately in the range of choice” for customers.

Several subcommittee members from Iowa, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin asked the executives to explain the effect of the acquisition on rural cellphone service.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, asked if it were true, as critics have said, that both companies had large blocks of unused spectrum — the airwaves on which mobile phone traffic travels — in rural areas, where there is often spotty service.

Mr. Stephenson replied that without the merger, his company would not be able to expand its wireless broadband service to rural areas.

Mr. Stephenson also made several references to President Obama’s goal of expanding wireless broadband service to as many Americans as possible in the next few years, saying that the combination of the two companies would allow his company to do just that.

“This is a private market solution for a public policy objective,” Mr. Stephenson said.

The president’s goal, he said, “could become a reality purely with private capital.”

Mr. Kohl, in turn, scoffed at Mr. Stephenson’s repeated appeals to public policy goals.

“You would almost argue to us today that what you are doing is in national interest,” Mr. Kohn said.

“This is a business deal to make your company more successful and more profitable.”

While Mr. Kohl said he did not have any problem with a profit-making company looking out for its own interest, “we should discuss it in that context, not as what is in the national interest.”

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A Clash Over the Airwaves

April 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Those annoyances are likely to get worse, as airwaves that carry cellphone signals and wireless Internet connections grow ever more crowded.

The Federal Communications Commission has a solution: reclaim airwaves from “inefficient“ users — specifically, television broadcasters — and auction them off to the highest bidder, sharing some of the proceeds with television stations that volunteer to give up airwaves, known in the trade as spectrum.

Broadcasters, however, are furious with the plan, setting the stage for an old media vs. new media lobbying battle with cellphone companies and the government.

“We’re in full battle mode to protect broadcasters from being forced to give up spectrum,“ said Gordon H. Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters and a former United States senator, addressing his members at their meeting here last week. The CTIA, the lobbying group for the wireless industry, quickly fired back, accusing broadcasters of “desperate and inaccurate stall tactics,” said Steve Largent, the group’s president, who is a former Oklahoma congressman and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Broadcasters have long been under siege, their audiences slipping away to cable television, their advertisers defecting to the Internet. Although giving up spectrum would go unnoticed by most viewers, the fight to hold onto a chunk of the airwaves could be the industry’s biggest battle in years.

“We are not going to volunteer,“ said Leslie Moonves, the CBS chief executive. “Spectrum is our lifeblood.“ CBS owns and operates 14 stations in the large markets that the F.C.C. is considering for spectrum sell-offs.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in whose hallways the battle is likely to be fought over the next year, have already challenged the assertion that the auctions would be completely voluntary.

“Sounds kind of like a bank holdup to me,“ Representative John D. Dingell, a prominent Michigan Democrat, told Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, at a hearing in February. “You hold a gun at the teller’s head and say, ‘We know that you are going to voluntarily give me this money. If you don’t, I’m going to shoot you.’ “

To the government, the overcrowded cellphone spectrum and wireless broadband networks have put the United States on the verge of a “spectrum crisis“ that, unaddressed, will threaten the nation’s technological leadership and economic growth. The 120 megahertz of spectrum being sought from the broadcasters would increase the amount available for cellphones and other wireless devices by about 22 percent, to 667 megahertz. On top of that, the Obama administration has said it wants to free an additional 380 megahertz for wireless Internet use.

“This growing demand is not going away,“ Mr. Genachowski told broadcasters last week. “The only thing that can address the growing overall demand for mobile is increasing the overall supply of spectrum and the efficiency of its use.“

From the days of analog signals, television bands leave broad spaces between stations to prevent interference — hence, their inefficiency. For cable TV or satellite viewers, airwave changes make no difference in reception. But for the 11 million households that still use an antenna to receive over-the-air signals (and thus do not subscribe to cable or satellite) there could be some interference between stations as the F.C.C. tries to press TV signals into a tighter spectrum bands.

Government officials deny this, but as the conversion to digital broadcasting showed, there can be unexpected consequences when you mess with the physics of broadcasting.

Mr. Genachowski has garnered support for the idea of reclaiming spectrum from some broadcasters. Also, a group of 112 economists who specialize in telecommunications, competition policy and auction design sent a letter to President Obama urging him to push Congress to approve incentive auctions. Three bills have been introduced in Congress supporting the idea.

But some members of Congress have opposed the plan, and the broadcasters’ group is a formidable foe. The group spent nearly $14 million on lobbying last year and made another $886,000 in campaign contributions toward the 2010 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, in Washington.

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