The FCC approved two NPRMs Tuesday designed to move the agency several steps closer to a TV incentive auction, still expected to take place next year. The first NPRM seeks comment on how Wi-Fi and other unlicensed transmissions will be able to use the TV spectrum post-auction. A second seeks comment on wireless mics that use the 600 MHz band. The FCC approved both on 5-0 votes.

AT&T, Mobile Future and Verizon each called on the FCC to reject T-Mobile and Sprint petitions a>sking the agency to make major changes to spectrum aggregation rules prior to the TV incentive auction. Sprint and T-Mobile sought changes last month (CD Aug 13 p1).

Representatives of Google and Microsoft urged the FCC to adopt technical rules permitting the use of three 801.11af channels in the 600 MHz band following the TV incentive auction, in a series of meetings with commission officials. The companies elaborated on their arguments in an ex parte filing in docket 12-268. The companies urged that the rules allow the operation of Mode 1 and 2 personal/portable unlicensed devices in the duplex gap, the lower guard band and Channel 37, the filing said (http://bit.ly/1uEzbyS). They argued that a database should be allowed to determine unlicensed device operation based on the device’s location-accuracy capabilities so devices with better accuracy can operate in appropriate locations, rather than preserving the current rule, which mandates that all devices establish location within +/- 50 meters. Unlicensed systems should be allowed to determine areas where devices can operate in the broadcast band using both the database and sensing, Google and Microsoft said.

The FCC must “move cautiously” as it creates service rules for unlicensed use in the 600 MHz duplex gap because of the potentially “complicated and challenging” interference issues that will come up as part of that proceeding, said AT&T Vice President-Federal Regulatory Joan Marsh in a blog post Wednesday. AT&T doesn’t share the FCC’s “confidence that unlicensed devices in the duplex gap in the configuration and at the power levels identified in the order can operate without creating interference to the adjacent licensed allocations,” Marsh said (http://bit.ly/1pkLH2c). FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a draft order and Further NPRM last week on interservice interference after the incentive auction (CD Sept 11 p4). Filings from Broadcom and Qualcomm provide disparate analyses of unlicensed devices’ ability to operate without interference in the duplex gap, an early indication of the technical challenges that lay ahead, Marsh said. Caution is “essential,” she said. “If interfering services are ultimately permitted in the duplex gap, the adjacent licensed blocks (and their associated paired channels) will not be fungible. They will instead be impaired licenses.” Some license impairments may be unavoidable, especially in border areas, but the FCC should try to avoid interference when possible because introducing it “where it need not exist would be a significant step in the wrong direction,” Marsh said.

The FCC threatened the success of the incentive auction by creating a reserve trigger and violated its congressional mandate to protect broadcasters with its repacking plan, said multiple petitions for reconsideration of the incentive auction order by wireless carriers, broadcast affiliates, low-power TV stations and others.

Wireless mic maker Sennheiser formally asked the FCC to reconsider parts of its incentive auction report and order on wireless mics. As of June 2010, companies had to take all 700 MHz mics out of service and replace them with devices that use 600 MHz spectrum, the company said in a filing in docket 12-268, not yet posted by the FCC. “Now, if the 600 MHz spectrum auction and TV band repacking proceed as planned, microphone users will lose most of their remaining spectrum,” Sennheiser said. A proposal to allow continued operations in the 600 MHz guard bands won’t make up for the loss, Sennheiser said. “The guard bands are likely to receive out-of-band emissions from neighboring operations and to have power limits inconsistent with some uses of wireless microphones,” the company said. “Moreover, a performer’s ear monitors require frequencies separated from those for the microphone, resulting in a need for two distinct bands in UHF.” Sennheiser asked the FCC to “revisit its policies so as to make adequate UHF spectrum available.” Several options are available, including reserving “naturally occurring” vacant channels and Channel 37 for wireless microphones, “or setting aside additional spectrum from that to be auctioned,” the company said. The FCC should also require auction winners to pay the cost to move mics to other frequencies, Sennheiser said: “The Commission has recognized elsewhere the inequity of leaving incumbents to bear their own costs of relocating to a different band for the sole benefit of auction winners.” The German company said wireless mics are vital to the U.S. economy. “Wireless microphones are ubiquitous in all aspects of the entertainment business, in news reporting, in sports, and in U.S. commercial, civic, and religious life,” Sennheiser said. “They are essential to the production of virtually all non-studio broadcast events, and to nearly all studio-produced programs as well.”

Sprint won’t participate in the FCC’s upcoming AWS-3 auction but “will continue to evaluate the opportunities presented by the upcoming 600 MHz incentive auction,” a spokesman said Friday. Industry observers had anticipated that Sprint wouldn’t get involved in the AWS-3 auction due in part to its interest in next year’s incentive auction (CD Sept 12 p1). Friday started an eight-week “quiet period” when “few to no” secondary spectrum transactions are likely to occur because parties interested in bidding in the AWS-3 auction can’t speak to one another during the two months before the auction’s Nov. 13 start date, said Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche in a note to investors. The “explosive” growth in mobile data usage since the U.S.’s last significant spectrum auction in 2008 and significant uncertainty about the incentive auction mean carriers will “see this as their last chance to get their hands on some spectrum for a while (at least from the government),” Fritzsche said.

LAS VEGAS -- Compared with the TV incentive auction, the AWS-3 auction, which starts Nov. 13, got much less attention at the Competitive Carriers Association and CTIA conferences this week. Industry officials disagreed on the extent to which smaller carriers are likely to go big in the 65 MHz AWS-3 auction. CCA concluded Wednesday while CTIA wrapped up Thursday.

A draft order and Further NPRM on interservice interference after the incentive auction will reject calls from NAB and broadcast industry engineers for a cap on the total amount of aggregate interference a station can receive, a senior FCC official told us. The item was circulated by Wheeler this week (CD Sept.9 p4) along with other auction-related draft NPRMs on low-power TV, wireless mics and the commission’s Part 15 rules, the official said. The wireless mic and Part 15 NPRMs are slated for the commission’s Sept. 30 meeting, while the interference and LPTV items are on circulation for electronic voting, said the official.

The tentative agenda for the FCC meeting Sept. 30 includes an order to eliminate the sports blackout rules, and a comprehensive review of licensing and operating rules for satellite services, the commission said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1COFw0t). The sports blackout rule item comes after FCC officials told us some commissioners strongly wanted to end the rule (CD Aug 4 p6). The FCC received thousands of letters from the public on both sides of the issue last month, including from the “Protect Football on Free TV” campaign. It’s time “to sack the sports blackout rules for good,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in an op-ed in USA Today (http://usat.ly/WMjUAW). There are nearly 20,000 letters from that campaign, led by former NFL player Lynn Swann, an NFL spokesman said. He also referred us to Swann’s August statement urging the FCC to “put sports fans interests above pay-TV special interests and keep the rules” (CD Aug 26 p15). The current system is “working a lot better for the league [NFL] and its owners than it is for the fans, who on average pay nearly $500 to take a family of four to a game,” he said. “If the league truly has the best interest of millions of American fans at heart, they could simply commit to staying on network television in perpetuity.” FCC rules shouldn’t reinforce a system “that works against viewer choice,” said John Bergmayer, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney. Private parties shouldn’t be able to use government regulations “as an excuse to limit what people can see,” he said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1tIqqHh). Also at the meeting, the commission will vote on a Further NPRM to streamline and update Part 25 rules on licensing and operation of satellites and earth stations, the FCC said. The comment period on the streamlining of more than 100 rules closed last year (CD Feb 15/13 p4). Also on the agenda are an NPRM revising rules for unlicensed operations in the TV bands and new 600 MHz band, and an NPRM on the needs of wireless mic users, it said.