By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Only in Washington would major industries spend millions of dollars to fight over, essentially, nothing.
For months now, broadcasters and high-tech firms have battled over what both sides refer to proudly as "white spaces" -- the unused broadcast channels in between the local channels that we watch on television.
Turns out all that emptiness is potentially worth a fortune. All that's required is for regulators to allow companies to utilize those spaces to carry broadband signals so that fancy new devices can take people onto the Internet.
The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents local TV stations, thinks that's a terrible idea. It contends that the machines tapping into those idle spaces -- at least the devices that are portable -- would interfere with the reception of the digital TV sets that will soon proliferate.
The broadcasters' engineering group, the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), has distributed studies showing that TV pictures would freeze and go silent as soon as these devices are unleashed in a neighborhood. The concert industry, news organizations and sports teams are also expressing concern that the new devices would cut off their wireless microphones and cameras.
Not so, say the tech giants that want to expand high-speed Internet connections and sell the white-space devices. Microsoft, Google, Dell, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics and EarthLink have formed the White Spaces Coalition (really, there is such a thing) to lobby lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission to convert the gaps into gold.
They assert that the technology exists to avoid TV interruptions, even when the open channels differ from region to region. Channel 8, for example, might be already spoken for in one place and be available to the Web in the next town.
The coalition has given the FCC strange-looking test devices, created by Microsoft and Philips, which it says will prove that the broadcasters' concerns are overblown. They also say beaming the Internet this way would be so powerful that it could travel through walls and bring vast capacity to underserved regions.
WiFi networks, now sprouting in airports and coffee shops, could get some serious competition from the "super WiFi" provided by TV airwaves. So could satellite providers.
Dozens of lobbyists and executives have been swarming Congress and the FCC to apply as much pressure as they know how. The White Spaces Coalition has the heavier crew and has persuaded Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate to introduce legislation requiring the FCC to promptly issue new rules.
The agency is headed toward a decision in the fall. "It could be gigantic," said Scott Blake Harris, a lawyer for the coalition.
And all over white spaces -- which, by the way, are not actually white; "white implies empty," explained MSTV's David L. Donovan-- except for all that green.
Immigration's Clothespin CaucusCorporations have lots of complaints about President Bush's immigration bill: Its new federal database to verify that all workers are in this country legally would be too cumbersome; guest workers would not be allowed to stay in their jobs long enough before they are forced (temporarily) to go back home; and the number of visas for highly skilled workers would be too small.
Nonetheless, top industry lobbyists are urging colleagues to hold their noses and say yes anyway, just to keep the process rolling. At a recent meeting of a broad coalition that wants comprehensive changes in immigration, R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warned that unless Congress acts, employers will be hard-pressed to find enough workers and will be harangued by local authorities cracking down on the undocumented.
"The consequence of inaction is that more states and cities will target businesses and property owners," he said. "And failure now would end the process until after the 2008 elections."
Thank You, Aunt FannieRobert B. Zoellick, Bush's choice as the next president of the World Bank, will have to worry about only global poverty and not his own. When he turns 55 in July 2008, he will start to receive $91,310 a year from the Fannie Mae pension fund, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com.
Zoellick's most recent financial disclosure report, covering 2005, also shows that he owned between $1 million and $5 million in Fannie Mae stock, as well as a Fannie Mae-established 401(k) with between $100,000 and $350,000.
Not bad for working as an executive vice president at the mortgage giant for just four years in the 1990s.
Moonlighting Lobbyist of the WeekLobbyist Jared Genser has what he calls an "odd hobby." He works pro bono to free prisoners of conscience around the world.
The 34-year-old associate at the law firm DLA Piper got involved in this work as a law student at the University of Michigan in 2000, when he learned about a British national, James Mawdsley, who received a 17-year prison sentence in Burma for handing out pro-democracy leaflets. Genser helped secure Mawdsley's release by petitioning the United Nations and drumming up support from Capitol Hill.
"I was in the U.K. for his arrival," Genser said. "He gave me a firm handshake and a grin and said, 'You saved my life.' "
From then on, he was hooked. After he graduated the next year, Genser teamed up with six friends and started an all-volunteer group called Freedom Now, which in the intervening years has gotten half a dozen political prisoners out of jail in places as far flung as Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam.
He is working to release the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. Although Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 11 of the past 17 years, Genser is optimistic. "The stakes are too high to relent," he said.
Interim Hires of the WeekDonna A. Harman, a senior vice president of the American Forest & Paper Association, was named acting president, succeeding Juanita D. Duggan, who resigned.
Bill Wasserman, president of M+R Strategic Services, was appointed acting executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, the lobby that helped make genocide in Sudan a national cause. M+R, which recently hired Susan Roth as a senior vice president, has been a coalition consultant. Wasserman replaces David Rubenstein, who resigned amid complaints that under his leadership the organization struggled to deal with its rapid growth.
Separately, after more than eight years at the Marine Fish Conservation Network, Executive Director Lee Crockett is leaving to join the Pew Environment Group. And Democratic adviser and Washington lobbyist Mark Siegel moved to Locke Liddell Strategies.
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