There’s No Industry ‘Consensus’ Plan for 600 MHz Band, Milkman Says
FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman questioned in a blog post Friday whether there is a “consensus” industry band plan for the 600 MHz band. The FCC has been under some fire since the bureau released a public notice last month (CD May 21 p4) on alternatives to the “Down from 51 plan,” which had carrier and broadcaster support and raises a handful of other issues as well.
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"Over the past few weeks, the Commission has received significant input from parties representing a range of viewpoints on the type of band plan we should adopt when we re-pack the 600 MHz spectrum as part of the auction,” Milkman wrote (http://fcc.us/12fYHub). “At last count, there were over a dozen proposed band plans in our record. While some differ substantially, many seem at a high level to be quite similar -- and without close review may even give the misleading impression that a ‘consensus’ has in fact been reached. But we all know that the devil is in the details, and in reality the proposed plans are dissimilar in notable respects."
The plans are “in the ‘Down from 51’ family” but still differ, Milkman said. For example, she said, plans like that proposed by AT&T “would limit paired licensed spectrum to 50 MHz,” while T-Mobile calls “for a larger number of paired bands.” Plans by Verizon and T-Mobile “accommodate market variation by including television stations in the duplex gap in limited areas” while plans like NAB’s proposal “say there should be no market variation at all,” she said.
Milkman said the FCC’s goals in proposing the controversial “down from 51 reversed” plan are legitimate. “Were we to implement a plan that does not accommodate market variation, we could be forced to limit the spectrum available in all markets to the relatively small amount available in the most constrained market,” she said. “Consumers in all the other markets across the country would then be deprived of access to spectrum that could have been repurposed for mobile broadband. There would also be less money going to the US Treasury and to FirstNet, the planned mobile broadband network for emergency responders.”
On June 14, Milkman similarly defended the May public notice in a speech at a conference sponsored by the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy (CD June 17 p7). Last week, industry commenters told the FCC no one supports a Down from 51 reversed band plan (CD June 18 p1).
"Somehow the blog post still misses the point when it comes to market variation,” said NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan Friday. “Of course the FCC wants the ability to have variation. But the relevant question -- that for some bizarre reason the bureau refuses to ask -- is whether engineering even allows for meaningful variability. Where is the public notice that asks whether and how the inherent interference can be avoided? We haven’t seen it and fear that the drive for variability has trumped the science and engineering essential to avoid some of the painful interference mistakes of the past.” Kaplan was Milkman’s predecessor as chief of the Wireless Bureau.