The FCC should stay the course and allow robust unlicensed use of the TV band, Google and Microsoft said in an FCC filing. Unlicensed should be allowed to use a channel in the duplex gap, guard bands separating LTE from incumbent licensed services, and Channel 37, they said. The firms opposed petitions by GE Healthcare, Qualcomm and others for reconsideration of the incentive auction order. “Several of these parties base their petitions on the claim that unlicensed services cannot coexist alongside licensed services under any set of technical rules,” said a filing in docket 12-268. “This is plainly incorrect. It is always possible to avoid harmful interference by adjusting operating parameters such as transmit power, signal timing, spectral separation, and physical separation, and unlicensed devices in the 600 MHz band are no exception.” Also posted in the same docket Friday, Mobile Future opposed various recon petitions seeking changes to the rules. “The Commission should reject requests to reimburse Low Power television stations or wireless microphone users for the costs associated with relocation following the Incentive Auction, because those entities are not eligible for reimbursement of relocation expenses under the Spectrum Act,” Mobile Future said. “The Commission similarly should reject requests to protect LPTV and TV Translator stations in the repacking process as inconsistent with the Spectrum Act.”

NAB filed comments Wednesday in support of various petitions for reconsideration by broadcasters urging the agency to make sure broadcasters don’t pay a price if they're forcibly relocated if they don’t sell their licenses in the TV incentive auction. Some 31 parties filed recon petitions on the order in September (see 1409170044). CTIA also filed comments Wednesday, opposing some petitions for reconsideration while supporting others.

Discussions with Canada and Mexico to coordinate spectrum use in advance of the incentive auction could lead to a regionally harmonized “band plan for the Americas” similar to what was tried with the 700 MHz band plan, said Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein on a panel at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Wednesday. Though wireless industry officials at the discussion endorsed a regional or global 600 MHz band plan as a positive, NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan said it would be unlikely to succeed because the FCC's proposed variable band plan would be unattractive internationally. Because the plan involves “broadcast and wireless sharing the same yard,” it will be a hard sell outside the U.S., he said. “It's a bad plan.”

The FCC decision to delay the TV incentive auction wasn’t much of a surprise and shouldn’t lead any of the four national wireless carriers to rethink their likely participation, financial analysts and other industry observers told us. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all need, to one extent or another, low-band spectrum and so will go big in the auction, analysts agreed. Several observers said some spacing between this month’s AWS-3 auction and the incentive auction could help the carriers get their incentive auction plans in order. The FCC recently opted to delay the start of the auction from mid-2015 until early 2016 (see 1410240048).

The FCC voted 5-0 in an order not to adopt a cap on the amount of aggregate interference that broadcasters can receive after the post-incentive auction repacking (http://bit.ly/1sRxY97). The item had been set for the commission’s Friday open meeting, but was deleted from the agenda after being approved, officials said. Along with declining to adopt the cap requested by numerous broadcast commenters (see 1407080021), the item included an order adopting a methodology – called the ISIX methodology -- for calculating the interference broadcasters would receive from wireless carriers after the auction, and a Further NPRM seeking comment on that methodology once the FCC has learned from carriers how their networks will be deployed.

The government and the telecom and technology industries must aggressively begin paving the way for the emergence of 5G LTE, said government officials and network operators. Major carriers have begun rolling out enhanced services to meet growing needs of data capacity, while preparing for the advent of 5G and other emerging technologies, they said Tuesday at a 4G Americas event in Washington. The wireless industry is investing in and creating new network technology to increase speeds and use spectrum more efficiently, said wireless executives. The industry also should work to find ways to make handling the next-generation networks less complex, a service provider said.

Upcoming FCC spectrum auctions will set the stage for wireless tower companies to get more business, said analysts and wireless industry professionals in interviews last week. The terms of recent tower transactions could result in more tower sales, an analyst said. Bringing more spectrum into the market would be an advantage for the wireless tower industry, an economist said.

Short-form applications filed for the AWS-3 auction ran significantly below the numbers in the two past major auctions, 700 MHz and AWS-1 (CD Oct 2 p5). But the news is not all bad for the FCC, which hopes to raise big dollars and make a major down payment on FirstNet, industry officials tell us. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all jumped in, as has Dish Network, according to filings at the FCC.

As the FCC looks to expand Wi-Fi capacity, Globalstar’s proposal to use some of its mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum for terrestrial wireless purposes is a way to improve the efficiency of assigned spectrum, said an American Consumer Institute (ACI) Center for Citizen Research report. The proposal is an opportunity to expand Wi-Fi by providing 20,000 free access points to schools and other institutions, while continuing satellite services, the report said (http://bit.ly/1rdJAht). Some industry officials agreed the Globalstar proposal for the terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) can quickly be put into use. Some wireless operators said a time frame can’t be determined until thorough interference testing is done.

Questions are arising whether the FCC will be able to offer truly “fungible” spectrum blocks in the TV incentive auction, especially given commission plans to allow unlicensed use of the guard bands and duplex gap. Commissioner Ajit Pai raised the issue in his comments on the incentive auction unlicensed rulemaking notice Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1xH1eTa).