U.S. Said to Reach Agreement with Mexico on Incentive Auction Issues
U.S. negotiators worked out an agreement in principle with Mexico over channel assignments after the TV incentive auction, industry officials told us Wednesday. Canada earlier released a "Consultation on Repurposing the 600 MHz Band” and is on its way to addressing a post-auction world, the officials said.
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The FCC Incentive Auction Team released a public notice in May on impairment and clearing spectrum in the auction, which didn't address a major potential area of impairment -- broadcast interference from Mexico (see 1505210054). Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly questioned the omission when the PN was released. “The evidence in the record suggests that interference from TV stations in Mexico could result in significant impairments to major U.S. markets,” Pai said then. The FCC had no immediate comment.
An agreement with Mexico “makes the FCC's variability proposal even scarier, though, as they can now increase domestic impairments significantly if they keep this high 10-20 percent cap,” said a broadcast lawyer. “They will need to recalibrate.” A former FCC spectrum official questioned how solid any agreement could be, noting the continuing problems in trying to reband 800 MHz licensees along the Mexican border, 11 years after the FCC 800 MHz rebanding order was approved. “I’d love to see a copy” of the agreement, the lawyer said.
“In theory” an agreement “should help a lot, since Southern California is the biggest problem for both unlicensed and broadcast news,” said Michael Calabrese, director of New America’s Wireless Future Project.
Meanwhile, NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan in a blog post Wednesday said that Americans should care about whether the FCC protects wireless mic use in the duplex gap between uplink and downlink frequencies bought by carriers in the incentive auction. Tuesday, NAB offered a compromise on the gap (see 1507210062).
“When was the last time you turned to TV to follow details of breaking news as it unfolded -- the real, on-the-ground coverage from reporters in the field?” Kaplan wrote.” If you care about live, on-the-ground coverage of events that are shaping our world -- then you care about something called the duplex gap.” Safe space for microphones “is essential for broadcaster coverage of breaking news and emergencies,” he said.
Calabrese raised questions about the NAB proposal. “NAB’s fallback proposal will absolutely not allow the survival of enhanced Wi-Fi services that the commission decided last year to authorize in every market nationwide, just as Congress intended,” Calabrese said. “The unlicensed community understands that broadcasters do not want a second TV channel in markets like L.A. reserved for Wi-Fi and broadcast news microphones, since that would compress TV stations to an even greater degree. The only good solution is for the FCC to stick with the compromise and balanced policy it adopted last year.”