On Friday the FCC will finally move forward with its plan to conduct incentive auctions for spectrum currently held by broadcasters, in hopes of freeing up more airwaves for use by the wireless carriers. The open meeting starts shortly and will focus on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the auction, which includes a reverse auction where broadcast stations will essentially name their price for going out of business or being repackaged with other stations into a single channel. Meanwhile, the wireless carriers, most notably AT&T and Verizon, are eagerly waiting to bid on airwaves in hopes of sating their subscribers' demand for mobile data consumption.

Today's action are welcome news for telecom policy stakeholders, which have been urging the FCC to move forward quickly with its auction plans. But the process is far from over, many more details need to be cleared up, and political pitfalls abound. We have already seen indications that lawmakers representing minority and under-served constituencies have expressed concern about the loss of over-the-air stations, which are the only form of media consumed by some households. Those concerns will likely be echoed by viewers of rural stations, which are among the most likely to take the auction proceeds and suspend service. Finally, there are early indications that the spectrum freed up by this auction will be far less than what is needed by the wireless carriers, in both the near and long-term. That suggests the government must find a more efficient way for companies to share spectrum, rather than divvying it up in chunks and selling it for proprietary use.

The Obama administration has already indicated it supports a spectrum sharing arrangement that would extend across the country, but as always, the devil is in the details. The upcoming spectrum auction is crucial for solving the immediate need for more wireless bandwidth, but the future will call for a completely different regime of spectrum allocation. Given the deliberate pace at which this Commission has worked, we are skeptical that such an overhaul would take place under this FCC, even if President Obama is re-elected. Regardless, we'll be tracking the meeting closely to bring you any unexpected developments, as the Commission slowly advances the auction process.

Microsoft Tells Congress To Boost High-Tech Workers: Microsoft launched a campaign on Thursday urging Congress to relax immigration laws to allow more high-tech foreign workers into the country. The tech company has been a leading advocate for years of allowing more foreign workers into the country to fill engineering and research jobs; Microsoft claims there aren't enough qualified domestic workers to fill those openings, despite the high unemployment rate. Lawmakers from both parties have shown interest in allowing more foreign students that earn graduate degrees in STEM fields to stay in the country, but they have differed on whether those green cards should come from a new program or be re-assigned from the visa lottery program, as proposed in a bill rejected by the House last week (HR 6429).

Microsoft unveiled a proposal that would encourage states to both increase green cards while also providing more education funds to states that hire teachers and promote STEM fields. Under the Microsoft proposal, companies would be charged $10,000 to $15,000 per green card. Of course, opponents could always accuse Microsoft and other tech companies of looking for a discount on cheap foreign engineering talent, rather than competing with start-ups, Wall Street and Silicon Valley for America's best and brightest. The company's willingness to subsidize the new green card holders indicates the cost of hiring a foreign worker is significantly lower than what it would take to pay an American engineer or scientist.