The major carriers in the United States are speaking up and telling the President what they need, namely more spectrum.

The heads of AT&T, Cellcom, CTIA, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless yesterday sent a joint letter to President Obama, strongly urging him to free up more spectrum.

The letter referenced Obama's claims that America's future competitiveness and global technology leadership depend on the availability of additional spectrum and the necessity of not failing on that score.  

"As leaders of America's wireless companies, we couldn't agree more," the letter stated.

The carriers, along with CTIA, urged Obama to direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to identify and work to clear broad, paired, internationally-harmonized bands below 3 gigahertz.

The carriers asserted that access to spectrum in these critical bands will "greatly enhance efforts to realize the important goals set forth in [the President's] Wireless Initiative and the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan."

Available spectrum has become part of the debt debate in Washington recently, with multiple news outlets reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has included in his latest proposed plan an order to direct the FCC to auction available radio spectrum to wireless carriers.

Budget officials in Congress have said the auctions would raise $13.1 billion in new revenue for the government.