On Monday, the Bush administration submitted its budget to Capitol Hill, which included $21 billion in projected funds coming from the sale of commercial wireless communications licenses.

The FCC is expected to begin auctioning airwaves later this year as TV broadcasters release spectrum so they can shift to better digital signals. By law, the sale of these airwaves needs to be completed by January 2008. However, the $21 billion figure, which represents a 16% drop compared to last year’s budget, includes expected proceeds from sales that take place through 2009.

The budget projects that $6.9 billion will be raised during the 2007 fiscal year, $11.85 billion in 2008 and $2.2 billion in 2009. Last year, the budget estimated that these figures would add up to $25 billion.

Part of the budget includes a request of $313 million to run the FCC and its departments and another $1.5 million to help educate Americans about the analog-to-digital TV signal switch coming in February 2009, when analog televisions will no longer receive a signal over the air.

In September 2006, the FCC brought in $13.9 billion during the ACS auction of more than 1,000 wireless licenses.