TV Spectrum Auction Unlikely to Start Anytime Soon, McDowell Says

"An 18 to 24 month time frame to launch an incentive auction is very aggressive,” McDowell said in an interview. “A more realistic time frame for completion of the entire process would be the better part of a decade due to the unique complexities present here.”

The DTV transition, which freed up spectrum for a 700 MHz auction, “was a simpler endeavor because it didn’t involve voluntary action by broadcasters,” McDowell said. “It was mandatory as a matter of law that they vacate certain channels and move elsewhere on the dial,” he said. “This scenario is far more complicated because, for starters, we don’t know which broadcasters will actually be interested in surrendering their spectrum. That then feeds into a Rube Goldberg domino effect on the table of allotments and many more complications flow from that."

A second FCC official noted that the original DTV legislation was approved by Congress in 1997 and it took 10 years to hold an auction of 700 MHz spectrum. “There’s no time frame at all specified in the legislation, and any prediction of this happening quickly may be wishful thinking,” the official said. “It will be difficult,” said a top telecom lawyer. “It won’t be hard for this to slide and it will especially slide if there’s a change in president. I think that’s almost inevitable,” the attorney said of delay. “Experience suggests these things take longer than one hopes,” said Andrew Schwartzman, Media Access Project senior vice president.

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said predictions of three years or longer for an auction are probably more realistic. “I think Amy’s estimate is very optimistic, and I welcome the optimism,” he said. “There’s always the potential for multiple rounds of debate at the FCC, especially on a novel issue like this one. 700 MHz took the better part of a decade. Lessons were learned there to be sure, but the new wrinkle of the incentive auctions will complicate things once more."

"If you're an optimist like me, and if you understand the importance of moving quickly, you have to hope the 18-24 month time frame turns out to be realistic,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “You have to hope that, as Michael Powell said back in 2000, the FCC will start acting on ‘Internet time.’ But if you're a realist, or an historian of FCC affairs, you'd probably say it is more likely to be longer."

"Getting an incentive auction off the ground in the next 18-24 months is an ambitious goal in view of multiple, multifaceted challenges the FCC will likely encounter, but the fact that the agency has articulated a timeline so soon after the legislation’s enactment suggests the decision was previously made to make the auction a top priority and to devote the resources necessary to holding it within two years,” said Jeff Silva, analyst at Medley Global Advisors. “Indeed, incentive auction preparation probably has been under way for some time at the FCC. The FCC has a pretty solid track record meeting auction deadlines it sets, though an incentive auction introduces novel complexities and X factors into the mix.”

"A lot depends on whether the FCC tries to figure everything out at once, or whether they do this in discrete steps,” said Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld. “For example, you might want to do the reverse auction first, to see how complicated the repacking will be and how much spectrum will actually be available for auction. If you try to solve for all the possible scenarios at the same time, it gets very, very complicated. How can you even begin to do band planning for the new 600 MHz wireless service until you know what spectrum is available? How can you know that before knowing how many broadcasters will participate and what the repacking looks like? You either have to have some large set of possible scenarios or you have to stop after each major step to assess what to do in the next step.”