Democrats ask to postpone vote on spectrum bill

California Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Anna Eshoo urged their Republican counterparts to postpone Thursday's scheduled vote on spectrum legislation.

But the Republicans don't plan to budge.

"After almost a year of hearings and extensive meetings, the committee looks forward to convening the markup tomorrow at 10 a.m.," Debbee Keller, a spokeswoman for the committee Republicans, said in an email.

In a letter sent to Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Communications and Technology subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) on Wednesday, Waxman and Eshoo said they need more time to review the Republicans' spectrum legislation, which was released on Tuesday.

They also encouraged the Republicans to resume negotiations over the bill, which they say were cut off in October.

"We believe the differences between us can be resolved and we have some new ideas for bridging our differences that we would like to discuss with you," the Democrats wrote. "We hope you will agree to postpone the markup so we can work with you to produce a bipartisan bill that all members can support."  

The Republican bill would authorize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to auction spectrum that currently belongs to television broadcasters, splitting some of the revenue with the stations that choose to participate. The spectrum is potentially worth billions of dollars to wireless carriers, which are struggling to meet the growing data demands of smartphones and tablet computers.

The bill also allocates the D block of spectrum to build a public-safety broadband network. The wireless network would allow first-responders to communicate using video and other data during emergencies and would help officials from different agencies communicate with one another.

The Democrats support those provisions, but criticized the Republican bill for allowing the states to build the public-safety network, rather than giving the authority to a national nonprofit group.

In their letter, Waxman and Eshoo also said the bill should have allowed the FCC to set aside more spectrum for unlicensed use, which would allow several companies to share spectrum bands but would not generate additional government revenue.

The Republican bill creates a $3 billion fund to pay for costs that television broadcasters can incur as they move to new airwaves. The Democrats questioned whether that figure is too generous.

—This post was updated at 2:52 p.m.

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