Robert G. Allen  - Director of ITTA Telecommunications Consulting Group

Robert G. Allen is Director of ITTA Telecommunications Consulting Group. Prior to his current service, he was Senior Counsel to the Auctions and Industry Analysis Division of the Federal Communications Commission. His responsibilities at the FCC included implementing and executing the first U.S. broadcast spectrum auction. Mr. Allen acted as chief counsel on the broadcast auction project and drafted the review checklist containing the acceptability criteria for broadcast auction applicants. In this role, he acted as liaison between the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Mass Media Bureau. His views and analysis of current FCC spectrum auctions are outlined in an op-ed article recently submitted for publication.

Mr. Allen was also a primary author of the Commission's Report and Order adopting sweeping new service rules in the 218-219 MHz Data Service. Most significantly, he addressed the constitutional challenge to race- and gender-based bidding credits employed in the licensing of the Interactive Video and Data Service. He drafted a white paper setting forth the remedial proposal eventually adopted by the Commission, which sought to resolve the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals litigation in the case of Graceba Total Communications, Inc. v. FCC.  

Mr. Allen was Managing Principal in the telecommunications law firm of Allen & Harold, P.L.C. between 1985 and 1998. He practiced in the fields of satellite, telephone, new technologies and broadcast communications. He obtained one of the first FCC open video system (OVS) certifications in the country on behalf of a major land developer, as part of a plan to bundle OVS, Internet and competitive local exchange service package.

Mr. Allen led a successful legal effort to obtain initial experimental licensing and development of broadband satellite maritime communications capabilities on U.S. Navy vessels and private cruise ships. His regulatory work on behalf of a commercial contractor supported the Navy’s Challenge Athena project and resulted in the first use of the commercial C-Band satellite band on board a U.S. aircraft carrier (the U.S.S. George Washington). He worked to obtain the support of the Department of Defense and other key U.S. Government officials for an international spectrum reallocation proposal that would enable maritime users worldwide to employ commercial broadband satellite services at sea.

Mr. Allen was active in the development of new technology ventures in Russia. During the fall of 1992 he played a key role in the inauguration of a new privately owned Russian-American voice, data and television link between downtown Moscow and an earth station in the metropolitan New York City area, utilizing two Gorizont satellites in the Intersputnik system. Between January, 1992 and February, 1945, he was co-editor of The Commercial Code of Russia, an adaptive translation of the statutes, decrees and regulations of the Russian Federation, affording him an intimate knowledge of new Russian laws relating to privatization, banking, taxation, property and other fields of commercial law.

In the early 1980's, Mr. Allen served as an Adjunct Professor of Communication at the American University, Washington, D.C. and an Assistant Professor of Communication at George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia, He received the American Jurisprudence Award in Contract Law and was listed in the 1996, 1997 and 1998 editions of the Martindale-Hubbell Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He co-founded the Community Broadcasters of America and is a member of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the International Practice Committee of the Federal Communications Bar Association, the International Practice Section of the Virginia State Bar and the Bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Allen is married and lives in Prince William County, Virginia with his wife, Roseleen, and his two children, Jessica and Bobby Joe.