Bush hopes for $25 billion from spectrum sales

The Bush administration hopes to bring in as much as $25 billion through sales of wireless spectrum from 2007 to 2009, according to the administration's new budget. That estimate is up $7.8 billion from previous estimates. As much as $15 billion is expected to come from the sale of 90 MHz of spectrum later this year, with additional funds coming from other auctions, including the sale of spectrum to be given up by television broadcasters as they make the switch from analog to digital in 2009.

[Jacob @ Feb 7th 2006 9:58AM]

That'll pay for, what, two weeks of war?

[mrJones @ Feb 7th 2006 10:12AM]

Great. That should pay for about a month of more misadventures in Iraq.

[Mark Rinker @ Feb 7th 2006 10:27AM]

If they have the right to sell it - do they retain the right to secretly monitor its content, too?

[W Zach @ Feb 7th 2006 10:36AM]

say what you will about Michael Powell (Stern sure did) but he wouldn't let this happen

[EM @ Feb 7th 2006 11:41AM]

They're not actually selling the 90Mhz band. They are selling a total of 90Mhz of bandwidth. I believe the two ranges to be sold are 1710-1755Mhz (Currently used by 12 Gov't agencies using 2,240 frequency assignments) and 2110-2155Mhz (FCC currently holds this range).

[Paul @ Feb 7th 2006 11:45AM]

So if they are selling something that we, the public, owns, where is my cut? Oh no where they will just keep using it on uselss programs. Sweet.

[jared @ Feb 7th 2006 1:10PM]

We shouldn't be pissed that they're selling the public's bandwidth to corporations. We should be pissed that they used to give the public's bandwidth away to corporations for free.

[Motorola 3G Victim @ Feb 7th 2006 11:34PM]

Why don't they just add a new cellphone tax and let the carriers keep their money to build better networks with? I mean its embarrassing enough that my phones work better in China than they do here... and speaking of Iraq, I'm sure they have a better cellphone network, paid for with US tax dollars, than we do here too!

[Dallas Texas @ Feb 8th 2006 8:32AM]

Bad idea to sell public assets like Spectrum. This is especially true during the Bush regime where it will go to his war cronies instead of investing back into the US public.

Why is he now looking at public spectrum to raise military finds? Good grief, this guy has no bounds to squandering public assets.