“President Obama on Thursday will outline his plan to provide 98 percent of Americans with access to next-generation wireless technology in the next five years, including $5 billion for 4G build-out in rural areas and $10.7 billion for an interoperable, public safety network,” Chloe Albanesius reports for PC Magazine.
“Obama’s budget supports a one-time investment of $5 billion for 4G build-out in rural areas, which would be handled by the Federal Communications Commission,” Albanesius reports. “Obama said that will help spur reform of the universal service fund, a plan for which the FCC announced this week, and dovetail with the need for public safety officials to have access to wireless networks in rural areas.”
“Overall, Obama called for a $10.7 billion investment in such a network, including $3.2 billion to re-allocate D-Block spectrum to public safety, and $7 billion for the deployment of this network.
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Jeff Mason reports for Reuters, “The Federal Communications Commission hopes to ‘repurpose’ 120 megahertz of spectrum through incentive auctions where television broadcasters would voluntarily give up spectrum in exchange for a portion of the auction proceeds.
“The White House said it expects those auctions and more efficient use of government spectrum to raise $27.8 billion over the next decade,” Mason reports. “That figure is an estimate, however, and could end up lower or higher depending on the success of the auctioning process.”
Mason reports, “In addition to the fund to help rural areas, Obama will propose to put $3 billion from those proceeds toward “research and development of emerging wireless technologies and applications,” the White House said in a statement ahead of the president’s trip. Another $9.6 billion from the proceeds would be applied to curbing the deficit, a key goal of Obama’s next two years in office and a top demand from Republicans, who control the House of Representatives and will likely make deficit reduction a high profile topic in the 2012 presidential campaign.”
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