Associations that represent smaller carriers joined with Dish Network, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and major public interest groups to ask the FCC Tuesday to impose spectrum aggregation limits before the incentive TV auction. The FCC is expected to take up both auction rules and spectrum aggregation rules at its May meeting. The letter was also signed by Sprint, T-Mobile, C Spire Wireless, the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA), Rural Wireless Association, NTCA, Public Knowledge, Free Press and Writers Guild of America-West.

Lobbying is intensifying on services rules for the AWS-3 auction, with many meetings in the works, eighth-floor FCC officials said. The FCC is scheduled to approve parts of the rules at its March 31 meeting, so industry lobbyists likely have only through Monday to ask for meetings with commissioners and staff.

Small carriers largely welcomed the FCC’s proposal to dedicate at least some of the spectrum offered in the upcoming AWS-3 auction in the form of Cellular Market Area licenses, rather than much larger Economic Area (EA) licenses. Meanwhile, the major groups representing small carriers have worked out an agreement on Partial Economic Area (PEA) licensing, submitting a revised proposal to the FCC dividing the U.S. and its territories into 416 PEAs for the incentive TV auction.

The FCC ordered amateur radio operator Brian Ragan to pay $13,600 for operating a radio transmitter on 104.9 MHz in the San Francisco area without a license. He acknowledged he violated the Communications Act but asked for a lower fine because he had no malicious intent, the Enforcement Bureau said (http://bit.ly/1geMEIZ). Ragan had refused to allow FCC agents to inspect his station. “Under the applicable statute, the Commission need not demonstrate an intent to violate a rule to make a finding that a licensee engaged in willful misconduct,” the bureau said. “The proposed penalty is consistent with those assessed against other operators who engaged in unlicensed operations and failed to allow inspection by FCC agents. As a licensed amateur radio operator, Mr. Ragan is expected to comply with the Rules."

"The public interest is best served” by providing 24 MHz of spectrum for unlicensed use in the 600 MHz band plan following the TV incentive auction, said the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition in an FCC filing. The coalition, which also has included Public Knowledge, reported on a meeting between Michael Calabrese, director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project, and FCC Special Counsel Diane Cornell (http://bit.ly/1g0XeyM). While the spectrum law “imposed certain statutory guideposts,” the FCC “has the authority to allow shared unlicensed use of the guard bands, of Channel 37 and of any channels reserved for wireless microphones, all which is likely to be necessary to promote and sustain markets of national scope and scale for unlicensed chips, devices and services,” Calabrese said.

Verizon told the FCC Wednesday it’s “far past time” for the commission to start counting all 2.5 GHz spectrum in its spectrum screen. The agency is looking at spectrum holding policies prior to the TV incentive and AWS-3 auctions.

FCC work on incentive auction rules appears to be quietly pushed to the side, as key staff steam forward full-speed on rules for the AWS-3 auction, which must be wrapped up later this year, said agency and industry officials in interviews this week. While Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised the FCC is still on track to get out an incentive auction order in the spring (CD Dec 10 p6), industry and FCC officials said big parts of the rules simply can’t be ready then. Several industry officials pointed to two highly technical FCC workshops last week (CD Feb 24 p15) on “feasibility checks” for whether channels can move during the repacking part of the auction and on interservice interference prediction as a sign of the kinds of issues that seem far away from decision.

The FCC will work to fill some of the holes that the commission has yet to answer on the dynamics of the upcoming broadcast spectrum incentive auctions, said Chairman Tom Wheeler. “We live in revolutionary times and it’s requiring revolutionary thinking,” he said Monday in a video at an Association of Public Television Stations event in Washington. “Part of that revolution is spectrum and how the analog assumptions of yesterday don’t fit with the digital realities of today.” Never before has there been such a “risk-free and rewarding opportunity for people to participate in the digital revolution,” he said. Wheeler said the channel-sharing trial with Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA is “really important in demonstrating the realities of moving from analog concepts to digital reality.”

Dish Network’s play for spectrum comes down to having options, said Dish Chairman Charles Ergen. Dish is expected to end up with about a $5 billion investment in spectrum, he said Friday on Dish’s Q4 earnings call. He also said he’s worried about the media environment if a proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable is approved.

In what is seen by some as a key early indicator for the likely price of spectrum in the FCC TV incentive auction, the Canadian 700 MHz auction recently closed. It brought in bids of $1.99 MHz/POP, higher than the aggregate prices in the U.S. 700 MHz auction. Auction expert Peter Cramton of the University of Maryland said in an interview that U.S. auction watchers should view those prices as a very good sign for the upcoming 600 MHz sale.