No one supports a “down from 51 reversed” 600 MHz band plan, as proposed in the FCC Wireless Bureau in a May 17 public notice, CTIA said in comments filed at the commission. CEA offered a similar critique. The bureau also sought comment on a proposal to rely on TDD instead of FDD, which has been proposed by Sprint Nextel. The notice dominated incentive auction discussions at CTIA the following week, and with comments due at the commission Friday, it got little industry love.

"The consensus ‘Down From 51’ band plan proposed by a broad cross-section of wireless providers, broadcasters, and equipment manufacturers maximizes the public interest benefits of the 600 MHz spectrum and should be adopted without significant revision,” Mobile Future said Friday in a filing at the FCC on the commission’s controversial 600 MHz band plan public notice by the Wireless Bureau. “While the Bureau should be applauded for a clear focus on the need for a viable 600 MHz band plan, the recent Public Notice introduces additional uncertainty and undermines the growing consensus behind the ‘Down From 51’ approach,” Mobile Future said (http://bit.ly/163LYzf). “Specifically, the modifications to the consensus proposal suggested in the Bureau’s Public Notice raise engineering and policy concerns. The Commission should adopt the consensus band plan without significant alteration and dedicate its finite resources to other technical and engineering challenges facing a successful incentive auction."

An FCC Wireless Bureau public notice on the 600 MHz band plan doesn’t sufficiently deal with the problem of co-channel interference -- “one of the most critical unresolved elements” of the band plan -- said the NAB in a comment filed Friday (http://bit.ly/12LPFfS). The NAB said the commission can’t use a variable plan like the ones suggested in the PN without resolving “the interference implications of broadcasters and wireless carriers operating on co- and adjacent channels in neighboring markets under a variable band approach.” The NAB said both options explored in the notice -- a reverse “down from 51” plan and a time division duplex (TDD) plan -- threaten to “cause widespread harmful interference to both broadcast and wireless operations in the 600 MHz” and could threaten the success of the auction. However, of the two plans in the PN, NAB said it favored the reverse “down from 51” plan, “if the Commission is intent on proceeding with a variable plan.” In a co-blog post with AT&T and Verizon, NAB has previously endorsed a “down from 51” plan,” which it says is the industry consensus (CD May 22 p4). The NAB said the Wireless Bureau must “rigorously evaluate” co-channel interference if it intends to pursue a variable plan. “The band plan options introduced in the Notice skirt this issue entirely, evidently favoring academic economic flexibility over real-world engineering,” said NAB.

FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman defended a May 17 public notice seeking more information on a 600 MHz band plan following the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, saying the notice merely explores issues on which the agency needed additional comment. The notice proved controversial and was the hot topic at the CTIA annual meeting held the week after the notice was published (CD May 24 p1).

T-Mobile offered counterarguments to a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy study which said if Verizon Wireless and AT&T were barred from bidding in the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, auction revenue could be 40 percent lower than if they are allowed to bid (CD May 1 p12). The authors of the study “erect a strawman in which the Commission would entirely exclude AT&T and Verizon from the auction and, from this faulty premise, assert that auction revenues would be reduced by pro-competitive spectrum aggregation limits,” T-Mobile said Monday in a letter to the FCC. “In fact, no party has proposed to exclude AT&T and Verizon from the incentive auction.” T-Mobile said three of the authors of the study have done work in the past for AT&T. “Permitting the two dominant players to acquire all of the available 600 MHz spectrum would undermine the goal of limited government and, in particular, the successful model of the last 15+ years under which the wireless industry was allowed to operate on the basis of competition rather than intrusive regulation. Excessive concentration in spectrum resources, especially the critical lower-frequency spectrum, will entrench market power and diminish competitive pressure in the wireless industry, which, in turn, will lead to calls for undesirable government intervention over the terms and conditions of wireless service offerings,” T-Mobile said.

The “technically reasonable size” of a duplex and guard band as part of the 600 MHz band plan following an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum is 10 to 12 MHz, Intel executives said in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and staff. Intel “also recommended that the FCC define the technical parameters for any services in the duplex gap and guard band in advance of the auction and a manner that avoids causing harmful interference to adjacent mobile licenses,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/114TaHR). “Otherwise these adjacent channels would no longer be fungible with the other auctioned licenses. In general, Intel advocates that the FCC create auction and service rules that maximize flexibility for the marketplace to determine technology and service outcomes.”

Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh endorsed a controversial Department of Justice report on spectrum aggregation and competition (CD April 15 p7), in a letter filed at the FCC by Sprint Nextel. “After reviewing the Department’s Ex Parte in this proceeding, I believe it is fully consistent with its longstanding approach to competition policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike,” Thornburgh wrote. He was attorney general under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. “The DOJ filing properly draws upon decades of its antitrust policies and precedents in offering its comments,” he said (http://bit.ly/11fLSzO). “For the last 40 years, the Department has consistently supported public policies that promote competition and innovation in the telecommunications industry -- from the breakup of the Bell System in 1984 during the Reagan administration, to the allocation of new broadband PCS spectrum as competition to the old analog cellular duopoly during the George H.W. Bush administration, to challenges to proposed telecommunications mergers under the George W. Bush administration, to the Department’s exercise of its case-by-case merger review authority.” T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham also defended the DOJ filing in a Tuesday blog post. “Importantly, DOJ did not argue that AT&T and Verizon be barred from the upcoming auction or that they be denied a chance to add to their low-band spectrum cache,” she said (http://bit.ly/17lFu2q). “T-Mobile, likewise, has made clear that its proposed spectrum aggregation rule would contain an exception allowing the dominant carriers to purchase 600 MHz licenses in every market even if their spectrum holdings are already in excess of the established cap in particular geographic areas.” That hasn’t stopped AT&T from going on the attack, Ham wrote. “AT&T nevertheless has begun an all-out campaign to quash any limits whatsoever on its self-perceived right to acquire any and all licenses so long as it has the money and power to do so, at the expense of competition and future innovation in the wireless industry,” she said. “At the same time, AT&T contends that the 600 MHz spectrum is really nothing special, and regulators have no need to worry about excessive concentration of the low-frequency licenses in its hands.”

T-Mobile doesn’t want to keep AT&T and Verizon Wireless from bidding in an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, but merely to restrict any company from buying too much spectrum below 1 GHz, T-Mobile representatives said in a meeting with Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman, Gary Epstein, head of the Incentive Auction Task Force, and other FCC officials. “AT&T and Verizon’s presence in the 600 MHz band is important to T-Mobile because the two companies enjoy volume purchasing power, promote international standardization, and command attention from the global supply chain,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/19CNgnH). “Without their presence in the band, T-Mobile’s equipment costs and product development cycles would likely increase.” But a cap still makes sense, T-Mobile told the FCC in an ex parte filing on the meeting. “The precise implications of the cap will vary depending on how much spectrum becomes available during the 600 MHz incentive auction and the concentration of a carrier’s holdings in a particular market, but AT&T and Verizon will likely be able to acquire substantial amounts of spectrum in most counties under reasonable spectrum clearing estimates,” the filing said. “If, however, the amount of spectrum recaptured is especially low, or if an incumbent’s below-1 GHz spectrum holdings are especially high in an individual market, then strict application of a one-third cap could prevent a dominant incumbent from acquiring spectrum in that particular market."

Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell warned that rules on the repacking of stations tied to the incentive auction of broadcast-TV spectrum raises the risk that the auction could be overturned in federal court. McDowell spoke Friday, less than a month after he left the agency, as a new Hudson Institute visiting fellow. He was interviewed by former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, also associated with the institute. McDowell said it could take many months for the Senate to confirm Tom Wheeler as next FCC chairman, which could mean further delays in the auction if the agency doesn’t approve auction rules under acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn.

The FCC will make information on the incentive auction repacking available for “meaningful comment” this summer, said Assistant Wireless Bureau Chief Brett Tarnutzer. At an FCBA panel Thursday, he discussed several issues associated with the auction, including the recent public notice on the 600 MHz band plan and the commission’s reliance on TVStudy software to run the auction. Despite the complications inherent in the auction, the commission still believes it’s on track to release a report and order on it this year, and hold the auction in 2014, said Tarnutzer. “I believe we can do this."