Apple, Samsung, RIM push Congress for more airwaves
A coalition of technology companies sent a letter to key lawmakers on Tuesday, calling for Congress to provide more airwaves for smartphones and tablet computers. — The letter was signed by Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson …
Context & Ripple Effects
The spectrum fight in Washington has been running since at least 2007, when Forbes profiled the 'Spectrum Warriors' pressing regulators to free up airwaves, and it moved into open hearings by May 2011, when AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Apple and Google all testified before Congress on wireless capacity (that hearing lineup). What is new in this letter is the breadth of the signatories: device rivals Apple, Samsung and RIM — locked in patent litigation against each other — standing alongside network-equipment vendors Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Ericsson.
That Apple and Samsung could co-sign anything weeks after Apple's $1.05 billion jury verdict against Samsung signals how existential spectrum scarcity has become for every layer of the mobile stack. The story traveled widely on pickup from Gizmodo, CNET, The Verge and others, reflecting how unusual a unified hardware-plus-infrastructure lobby is.
First-order effects
- Key lawmakers now hold a single letter representing device makers, carriers' suppliers and infrastructure vendors, giving spectrum-allocation legislation an industry-wide mandate rather than a carrier-only one.
- RIM, fighting for relevance in hardware, gains a low-cost way to align itself with the ecosystem's winners on the policy front.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent holders of underused airwaves — most visibly broadcasters — face a better-organized push toward voluntary incentive auctions, since the letter gives Congress cover to frame reallocation as industry consensus.
- Equipment vendors like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Ericsson stand to book the network buildout that new spectrum triggers, which explains their seat at the table alongside the consumer brands.
Third-order effects
- If device makers keep lobbying as a bloc despite suing each other over patents, spectrum policy hardens into a standing item on tech's Washington agenda, with coalitions re-forming per band rather than per company interest.
- The pattern points toward recurring licensed-versus-unlicensed allocation fights, where each new band forces Congress and the FCC to pick winners among carriers, device makers and unlicensed users.
The trend: The mobile industry is converging on spectrum scarcity as the binding constraint on smartphone growth, turning airwave allocation into a permanent, cross-company lobbying priority in Congress.