Dish Offers 5 MHz Guard Band In Negotiating Rules For AWS-4

Dish offered to avoid using the lowest 5 MHz of its uplink spectrum for terrestrial use if the FCC ensures that the remaining 15 MHz is available for full use. Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen and Dish staff had meetings last week and this week with Chairman Julius Genachowski, the other commissioners and their staff, it said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bn4s3p). The proposal seems to have been met by the bureau with initial skepticism, but the bureau doesn’t seem to be shooting it down completely, the FCC official said. If the proposal had come a month ago, the bureau staff likely would have been able to work on it, the official added.

Dish proposed that it meet an OOBE limit of -30 dBm at 2000 MHz “if the H block is auctioned and used for full-power LTE,” it said. The H block operator must meet an OOBE limit of -49 dBm at 2005 MHz, it said. Rather than a -40 dBm at 2000 MHz, Dish is seeking a -30 dBm limit if it gives up its lower 5 MHz because such restrictive emissions into H block wouldn’t be needed, said a satellite industry executive. The -49 OOBE limit is intended to protect Dish spectrum from base station interference, which is worse than interference from mobile devices, the executive added.

Some telecom analysts said the proposal likely won’t delay the FCC’s plans to make a decision by the year’s end. The FCC draft would be a victory for Dish “but the new power limits would be a tactical defeat versus Sprint, which covets the H block and wants to combine it with its G block,” Stifel Nicolaus analysts said in a research note. Dish probably faces an uphill battle “given our belief that the FCC is placing a high priority on generating auction revenue from H, and Dish’s proposal would seemingly reduce H block revenues,” Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant said in a research note.

Dish’s proposal is “the typical 11th hour negotiations that happen at the FCC,” a satellite industry attorney said. “Right before a decision comes out, there’s a flurry of activity like this,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a problem from a timing perspective,” he added: “The commission could easily get this done by the end of the year.” It seems very late in the day for the order to be changed, said Tim Farrar, independent satellite industry analyst. The question now would be “whether the FCC is now taking Dish seriously about its intentions to build a network,” he said. The commission may have thought previously that Dish intended to sell off the spectrum, he said. “If the FCC was going into this with an assumption that Dish was not going to build and just sell the spectrum, then imposing lots of conditions would have held this up."

Dish’s latest proposal “doesn’t pass the smell test from a spectrum management, public policy, or business point of view,” said a wireless industry executive opposed to Dish’s new plan. Dish proposes to give less interference protection from its user equipment to user equipment in the H block than the commission proposed, he said. “That means a much higher risk of interference between handsets of the AWS-4 licensee and the H block user,” he said. He also opposed Dish’s recommendations for the H block operator to protect AWS-4 spectrum: “It means H block becomes much less desirable with a higher risk of interference and a much more expensive build.” Also, it’s unclear whether the 5 MHz that Dish proposes to give up with terrestrial services would still be used with its satellite service, he added.

There’s more use of downlink spectrum than of the uplink side because the way people use their cellphone is mostly in the downlink side, said the satellite industry attorney. “I think it [the proposal] is a reasonable accommodation for the way people use it today.” Generally, it seems like a way “for Dish to get what it wants while it still has a friendly chairman in the office,” he added.