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.

Inserting unlicensed services in the 600 MHz band, without unduly expanding the size of the guard bands and duplex gap, “will impair the adjacent mobile spectrum blocks and effectively destroy the fungibility of the licensed mobile spectrum that the Commission is working so hard to repurpose through the upcoming voluntary incentive auction,” Qualcomm told the FCC Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1gm79kk). The company was responding to a filing by Google and Broadcom, which “only analyzed a single use case” of the adjacent channel out-of-band emissions of the unlicensed device into an LTE user device, Qualcomm said. Google and Broadcom “completely overlooked the impact of blocking,” Qualcomm said. “Inserting unlicensed services in the 600 MHz band would be unwise from both technical and economic perspectives, will create wide areas of interference and impair the value of the adjacent licensed spectrum, and should therefore be avoided.”

New questions are starting to percolate about the conventional wisdom that, given expanding demands for data bandwidth, the AWS 3 and TV incentive auctions will each be a huge success, raising billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury. The two are the first major auctions since the 700 MHz auction, which was under way at this time six years ago.

Intel continues to favor allocating additional spectrum at 5 GHz for unlicensed use and maximizing the amount of spectrum for unlicensed in the TV band, said Peter Pitsch, executive director-communications policy, in a meeting with Jeffrey Neumann, aide to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. Intel favors a band plan for 600 MHz spectrum with seven pairs of wireless licenses offered for sale if possible, Pitsch said, said an ex parte filing from the company. “The licensees in the top markets, if they unanimously agree, should be able to make band plan changes after the auction closes,” he said. “The FCC should consider setting nationwide reservation prices for the guard band and duplex gap based on its assessment of the societal value of unlicensed use of these bands and put the guard band and duplex gap out for bid. If the total bids exceeded the respective reservation price, then the guard band or duplex gap would be licensed, otherwise, they would be unlicensed.” Other companies have been lobbying the FCC in recent days on Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum (CD Feb 6 p17).

The wireless industry asked the FCC to move forward on proposals to make wireless siting faster, especially in light of upcoming spectrum auctions that will require additional buildout. The FCC began a rulemaking in September (CD Sept 27 p10) on speeding wireless siting, especially for distributed antenna systems and small cells. Local government groups are raising concerns about the loss of local control on zoning decisions (CD Feb 4 p11). The FCC logged nearly 100 comments in the initial comment cycle. Industry officials said work on the NPRM presents FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler with a series of issues that will inevitably prove controversial.

A report and order establishing the framework of the incentive auction will be presented to the FCC this spring, announced the Incentive Auction Task Force in its update presentation at Thursday’s open commission meeting. The R&O will be followed by two public notices and comment periods to finalize every aspect of the auction, applications from prospective bidders will begin to be accepted in early 2015, and the auction itself will be held in mid-2015, said task force’s Chairman Gary Epstein. The NAB and CTIA praised the commission’s timeline, though some broadcast attorneys told us they're concerned about a lack of specificity and the commission’s plans for reaching out to broadcasters. “We are on course at speed to get this thing done,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.