Asked in a Q&A session at a Schwab Washington Research Group conf...

call.” In the telecom conference, Muleta also said the Commission was examining proposals on how to mitigate interference to public safety at 800 MHz: “It is too early for anyone to read into it that one approach is better than another.” Nextel, public safety groups and others have proposed a rebanding plan at the FCC for a spectrum swap among licensees at 700, 800 and 900 MHz and 1.9 GHz, including an $850 million pledge from Nextel to relocate displaced incumbents. CTIA, the United Telecom Council and others have weighed in against the plan, arguing that best practices and other measures could be used to correct interference problems. “I don’t think that the answer is simply a technical solution versus rebanding,” Muleta said. “I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. There’s got to be some spectrum-management types of answers to this and probably some technical-based ones.” Factors affecting where the agency comes out include the timing of different solutions, he said. If the FCC were to follow a path that involved rebanding and compensation for displaced incumbents, the question it must answer would be what form such payments should take, he said. “What we are trying to find is what’s an appropriate model for addressing this sort of compensatory system if you go in that direction,” he said. Muleta said that in the last several months, participants in the “consensus plan” had submitted several changes to address areas of disagreement, including measures Nextel said it would undertake to further secure its $850 million funding commitment. Schwab analyst Paul Glenchur asked Muleta about Nextel’s assertion that it stood behind the plan, including the funding portion, if the FCC accepted it in whole. Concerns have been raised as to what happens if the cost of relocating public safety incumbents and others exceeds $850 million. “Clearly one of the issues that we are struggling with is what if the costs exceed this,” Muleta said. The other issue has been what form such a compensation system should take. “Clearly that is for the Commission to decide,” he said: “It’s too early for at least anybody at my level to conclude that we are going in one direction or another on how to solve this problem.” While he said he couldn’t speak for the timeline of the 5 commissioners on that item, he said, “we are trying to come to some closure on that in the next quarter.” On wireless LNP, which took effect Nov. 24, Muleta said the process was highly systems-driven, meaning it was not unexpected that one or several carriers might have issues with implementation. He said he continued to talk with carriers about how things were going. In response to a question about what could trigger an FCC enforcement action, he said the agency would have to examine mechanisms to bring operators into compliance if a problem arose. Operators have had sufficient notice to know the requirements were coming, he said. Muleta likened the issues the FCC is examining for LNP compliance to factors at play in Enhanced 911 compliance: “We want to make sure carriers are doing everything they can. We want to be sure we understand what the issues are.”