Low-Band Spectrum Alone May Not Be That Valuable, Wireless Panelists Say
All spectrum is important, said panelists at a Practising Law Institute session on wireless developments, but there was some disagreement over how valuable low-band spectrum is on its own. Panelists also agreed that a 180-day shot clock on merger review, proposed by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, is a good idea, if the agency gets some flexibility to pause the clock.
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Six hundred megahertz in and of itself isn’t “efficient,” said CCA President Steve Berry, but it allows carriers to be more efficient and cost-competitive. Without low-, middle- and high-band spectrum, carriers won’t have a product that’s responsive to consumer demand, he said. The type of spectrum that can be accessed directly affects the way the consumers use their devices, he said.
For Joan Marsh, AT&T vice president-federal regulatory, low-band is not enough for building penetration. Unique small cell deployments are necessary in the buildings AT&T serves because “low-band spectrum is not getting us there,” she said. “You have to do dense build: It’s all about microcells and picocells.” That’s what carriers are going to have to do to be competitive, she said: “All spectrum is valuable to us but in this day and age you can make as good a case for broadcast spectrum as you can for low-band spectrum.” The propagation characteristics of the various bands of spectrum are just the start of the conversation, she said: You have to go much deeper than that.
It’s easy to say that low-band spectrum isn’t that valuable “when you have a bunch of it,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood, to tittering from the crowd.
Carriers want as much spectrum available as they can get, Berry said. Whether there’s 84, 94 or 120 MHz available, most of the various differences of opinion on technical specifics get resolved if carriers get access to more spectrum, he said. The real concern is how to get broadcasters “to actually show up” and offer as much spectrum as is necessary to be usable, he said. “All spectrum is valuable,” he said. “We've got to squeeze every megahertz of spectrum we can out of the 600 MHz.”
Companies that want to have a consistent plan that provides coverage and capacity need a mix of different spectrum, said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press. A mix of licensed and unlicensed is the best, he said.
David Goldman, wireless aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, said the commissioner plans to look at what the law says. We're allowed to have guard bands, and we're allowed to have unlicensed use in the guard bands, he said. Rosenworcel feels that’s an “elegant” solution to approaching this issue, he said: Licensed has benefits, but unlicensed does too -- low barriers to entry and the possibility for innovation. Rosenworcel wants to find a balanced approach with a “healthy mix” of licensed and unlicensed, he said.
"We can’t talk about it abstractly,” Marsh responded. Proponents of unlicensed uses in guard bands need to come forward with a very specific proposal, because the industry can’t have unlicensed uses that create interference, she said. “We welcome any unlicensed uses into the guard bands, but we do need demonstration that that use will not create interference to the neighboring wireless licensed” frequencies, she said.
On the H-block auction, Marsh said there’s a lesson to be learned from Sprint’s recent announcement it won’t participate. Sprint has “waged a pretty significant war with Dish” to protect that block, she said, and “surprised the entire industry” when it said it wouldn’t show up in the H-block auction. “It’s an interesting study as to assumptions about who may show up at an auction and who may not show up at an auction, and setting rules around those assumptions, which could end up being wrong,” she said.
On FCC review of mergers, “we need a lot more certainty,” Berry said. CCA members would be for a 180-day clock, he said, but he has a couple of concerns. He said he feels “uneasy” about saying the FCC can’t stop the clock -- what if Congress decides to shut down the government for 30 days as the clock’s still running? Also you don’t want the FCC to be “bullied” by participants who might stonewall the information and then dump it in the last day or two, he said.
A 180-day clock is especially important to provide certainty for capital markets, said Marsh. She supports Pai’s idea to “not only embrace the 180 days, but perhaps codify it” to drive certainty in the merger review process, she said.