The FCC should preserve one noncommercial educational channel in each community during the post-incentive auction repacking, said Association of Public Television Stations President Patrick Butler and other APTS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS officials in a meeting with Commissioner Mike O’Rielly Monday, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 12-268 Wednesday. Holding space for an NCE channel would “allow any broadcaster to volunteer to participate in the incentive auction, and at the same time would continue the Commission’s well-established reserved spectrum policy by ensuring space for a new entrant in the event that an unserved area develops,” the filing said. The FCC also should grant priority status to displacement applications for translators connected with NCE stations after the auction, the public TV representatives said. The FCC should avoid repacking any stations into the new wireless bands, the filing said. The commission should “maintain a contiguous television broadcast band due to the insurmountable challenges with implementation of a repacking plan that intermingles broadcast and wireless services in the 600 MHz Band,” the filing said.

There's no chance that spectrum licenses sold in the TV incentive auction will be truly generic or equal and there is broad agreement that the FCC’s solutions for addressing this issue won’t work, AT&T told the FCC in reply comments on a public notice on competitive bidding rules. Several large broadcasters weighed in with ideas to increase auction participation, including decreasing the increments by which prices in the reverse auction are lowered. The comments were filed in docket 12-268.

Dish Network is unlikely to build its own wireless network despite a rash of spectrum buys, said T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter Thursday at a Morgan Stanley financial conference. Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen “has done a masterful job” of creating a mid-band spectrum portfolio important to carrying data traffic, he said. “What Charlie ends up doing, gosh, I wish I could answer that.” Ergen has said recently that Dish would be in no hurry to monetize its spectrum holdings (see 1502230038). T-Mobile would be a “very interesting” party to work with Dish on deploying its spectrum, Carter said. Carter also said T-Mobile followed a “very disciplined” strategy in the AWS-3 auction since it's already well positioned in the mid-band spectrum offered in that auction. “We went into the AWS-3 auction with the best mid-band portfolio in the U.S. and we came out of it with the best mid-band portfolio,” he said. Carter hinted T-Mobile may go much bigger in the TV incentive auction and the 600 MHz spectrum that will be for sale. “Our priority is to perfect our low-band footprint” and put T-Mobile on a level playing field with the other three national carriers, he said. T-Mobile has “years of runway” to expand its network with its current spectrum holding, he said.

The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition (EOBC), which represents broadcasters considering the sale of their spectrum in the TV incentive auction, Wednesday proposed a revised formula for determining the value of TV stations headed into the auction. A spreadsheet released by EOBC shows the starting prices for more than 2,000 TV stations based on the FCC’s proposed starting formula and the alternative offered by EOBC.

Test results by consultant V-Comm point to major interference issues if white space devices and wireless mics are allowed to use the 600 MHz guard band or duplex gap following the TV incentive auction, said CTIA representatives. They met with FCC officials Feb. 25 to answer their questions and explain the V-Comm test results, said a filing posted Monday in docket 14-166. CTIA explained V-Comm’s “parameters and the technical assumptions used in conducting the interference testing,” CTIA said. “V-COMM explained that unlike the other parties that provided technical data in this proceeding, its testing relied upon actual measured values rather than 3GPP [3rd Generation Partnership Project] standard defined values for receiver sensitivity and blocking.” Unlicensed operations in the TV spectrum are being examined more closely by the FCC as rules are written for the incentive auction, expected to get underway next year (see 1502260008).

Sprint officials asked the FCC to revise the F(50,50) statistical measure that will be used as part of the TV incentive auction to predict interference from full-power and Class A DTV transmitters to wireless base stations. The measure bases interference on a standard whereby a signal will be strong enough to interfere in 50 percent of the locations 50 percent of the time. “Sprint demonstrated that the F(50,50) statistical measure severely underestimates the real-world levels of interference that wireless operators could experience, as compared to the more realistic F(50,10) measure of predicted interference,” the carrier said. It reported on a meeting with FCC officials on the topic, in a filing made Thursday in docket 12-268. The FCC should also use the F(50,10) statistical measure supported by Sprint and broadcasters, CTIA also told the FCC last week (see 1502270047).

New American Foundation's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and Public Knowledge jointly asked the FCC in comments filed Wednesday in docket 12-268 to adopt final rules that will ensure at least three to four 6 MHz channels are available for unlicensed white spaces devices in every market in the U.S. Others said the rules are either too liberal to too restrictive. The FCC sought comment on both the future of wireless mics and of unlicensed operations in the TV bands as part of its work toward rules for the TV incentive auction.

Allowing unlicensed operations to use the TV guard bands after the TV incentive auction, as proposed by the FCC, is a doubly bad idea, Brattle said in a report filed Wednesday and paid for by Qualcomm. The policy will be ineffective because operations in the guard bands won’t attract investment, Brattle said. “Their limited bandwidth makes the 600 MHz guard bands inferior to the unlicensed bands at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz for Wi-Fi-type applications, and the necessarily limited transmit power precludes use of 600 MHz unlicensed devices altogether for long-range applications such as rural broadband.” All use of the spectrum would yield is “Wi-Fi on tranquilizers,” the report said. The potential interference will also mean carriers are less likely to buy spectrum in the incentive auction, Brattle said. “Our analysis of an LTE network in a band similar to 600 MHz shows that a 5 percent loss of capacity due to interference from unlicensed operations in the guard bands will lower the value of the affected spectrum by 9 percent; a 20 percent loss of capacity will lower its value by 43 percent; and a 35 percent loss of capacity will eliminate most (93 percent) of its value.” Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, told us he's not surprised by the report because Qualcomm has long opposed unlicensed use of TV spectrum, including the TV white spaces. "It simply reemphasizes our concern that Qualcomm is attempting to kill Wi-Fi in everything but the 2.4 GHz band," said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld.

Correction: The transmission method used for the two streams that FCC Incentive Auction Task Force Vice Chairman Howard Symons clarified that he meant to say were shared in last year’s channel sharing pilot between Los Angeles' KLCS and KJLA were in HD (see 1502240035). Dynamic reserve pricing is a limited exception to the rule that the commission freezes stations at a certain price rather than put them into the wireless portion of the 600 MHz band, an FCC official said.

AT&T and Verizon objected to an FCC proposal to boost wireless competition by putting impaired licenses, subject to a higher interference risk, in the pool of licenses for which they can bid in the TV incentive auction, in comments filed at the FCC in docket 12-268. CTIA said the FCC should keep the auction rules as simple as possible.