T-Mobile US has enough spectrum to last the next 3-4 years, but will “remain opportunistic when presented with an opportunity to acquire spectrum that will add to/complement its portfolio,” Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche reported two of the carrier’s executives said during a dinner the investment bank hosted Monday for investors. David Mayo, senior vice president-technology, and Nils Paellmann, vice president-investor relations, said the carrier prefers low-band spectrum between 600 MHz and 800 MHz, but would “not rule out wanting more AWS spectrum,” Fritzsche said in an email to investors. T-Mobile remains active with its rollout of fiber to its towers, with 35,000 of its 51,000 total cell sites now having fiber drawn to them, Fritzsche said. T-Mobile is also pleased with its porting trend since closing the MetroPCS merge deal, particularly its ability to capture customer share from AT&T, Fritzsche said.

LAS VEGAS -- FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said it’s time for the agency to recognize reality and start to lay out some of the key rules for the upcoming incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, starting with the band plan. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who also spoke Wednesday at CTIA, said the FCC is “still at the beginning of a long haul” but the 600 MHz band plan itself must be ready by Q3. “All good deliberations must come to an end,” she said. The FCC on Friday, as CTIA’s annual show was about to begin, released a public notice suggesting more alternative versions of a band plan. On Tuesday, NAB, Verizon and AT&T said the FCC’s proposals show a “disconnect” between the commission and industry (CD May 22 p4).

The FCC’s proposed plan for the 600 MHz band shows a “disconnect” between the commission and the wireless and broadcast industries, said AT&T, Verizon and NAB in a joint blog post featured on all three entities’ websites Tuesday (http://bit.ly/191hcK7). Echoing comments by Commissioner Ajit Pai on Friday’s public notice requesting comment on the band plan (CD May 20 p4), the three said the FCC proposals of a reversed “down from 51 plan” and a time division duplex (TDD) plan fly in the face of “hundreds of pages of comments” and two industry consensus letters. “The first has absolutely no support in the record and the second adopts a technological approach contrary to the one proposed by the majority of U.S. carriers,” they said. An FCC official responded that the PN was intended to “expand the record” on the ways “various band plans can deal with market variation so that we avoid a ‘least common denominator’ effect that could limit overall spectrum recovery and revenue generation."

LAS VEGAS -- One of the key tenants behind the FCC’s incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, as rules evolve, appears to be “fungibility,” said FCC and industry officials watching the process closely. Under the theory of the auction, being developed by economists at Stanford University and elsewhere, officials say, carriers won’t bid for a specific block of spectrum but for an amount in a given market. The possibility of fungible blocks got considerable attention at the FCC’s recent 600 MHz band plan workshop (CD May 6 p1). Critics question whether the concept makes sense and will prove workable, in the end, since all spectrum is not created equal and different blocks come with different issues depending on where they are in the 600 MHz band -- how close to broadcast operations and the guard bands.

The FCC Wireless Bureau released a public notice exploring possible changes to the band plan for 600 MHz after an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, over the “serious concerns” of Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai. Comments are due June 14, replies June 28, said the Friday notice.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said work on the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum is moving forward as well as could be expected. Genachowski is pleased the agency has launched a critical debate headed into an auction that could start as early as next year, he said in an interview Friday as he prepared to leave the commission. Genachowski, a friend of President Barack Obama, chaired the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Policy Working Group during the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, and has been on the job since June 2009.

With FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski set to leave the agency Friday, the Wireless Bureau is expected to release a public notice that explores various band plans for the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum. Genachowski also circulated this week, among other items, an order approving Progeny’s proposal to launch its E-911 location service in 902-928 MHz spectrum, and a public notice asking questions about the next wireless competition report. Agency staff said they have been flooded with calls at the same time as their desks were flooded with items circulated by the chairman.

Future spectrum auctions will be a bust unless the FCC first requires interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band, said McBride Spectrum Partners Senior Partner Vincent McBride, in comments filed at the FCC. “Any future spectrum auctions will be inconsequential and largely an unavoidable disaster without first ruling on and enforcing interoperability across the entire 700 MHz and 600 MHz spectrum bands,” he said (http://bit.ly/12hmRrM). “The fact of the matter is that any sound and prudent judgment based on the situation will tell you that interoperability is a prerequisite before any incentive auctions can take place. The benefits of interoperability are widely shared, and especially meaningful to consumers."

NAB, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and high-technology companies wrote the FCC Friday urging the agency to limit the size of the duplex gap and guard bands built into the new band plan for the 600 MHz band, made necessary by an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum. The duplex gap and guard bands were one of the most contentious topics at an all-day workshop on the band plan at the commission Friday.

T-Mobile US emerged from last week’s merger of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS having achieved its main goal in that deal -- gaining access to additional spectrum to expand its LTE network and other services to make it more competitive against Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel. The merger, which closed Tuesday, increased T-Mobile’s average spectrum holdings in the top 25 U.S. markets from 63 MHz to 76 MHz (CD May 2 p9). The addition of MetroPCS’s spectrum, along with other recent spectrum deals, means T-Mobile is in a good position to meet its burgeoning spectrum requirements in the near-term. But industry experts told us the carrier is highly likely to be an active participant in upcoming auctions for additional spectrum, if the FCC implements acceptably pro-competitive rules.