Apple, Samsung & RIM Urging Congress to Provide More Airwaves

A letter signed by Apple, Cisco, Intel, Research In Motion and Samsung among others, has been sent to “key lawmakers” urging the Congress to provide more airwaves for smartphones and tablet computers, reports The Hill. 

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly working to implement a law to auction some TV stations’ airwaves, called spectrum, to cellular carriers, However, the companies are pushing for more auctions, says the report. The companies are saying that authorizing new spectrum auctions is timely and relevant to the “debate of automatic spending cuts and tax increases”.

The companies urged the top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate technology committees to look into auctioning some of the spectrum currently used by federal agencies.

“Now is the time to ensure the incentive auctions are as robust and successful as possible at liberating spectrum. We should also turn our collective attention on ways to reap the economic benefits of underutilized federal spectrum assets,” they wrote.

They said Congress should incentivize federal users to “become more efficient, to share with one another, to vacate, or to lease their spectrum.”

The companies speculate that new spectrum-efficient technologies will not be enough to meet the booming demand for mobile data.