Verizon isn't interested in pursuing Dish Network to get ahold of its spectrum or for any other reason, said Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo at a Goldman Sachs investor conference Thursday. Shammo, who's soon departing (see 1609010085), also said Verizon won’t offer unlimited data plans. Shammo offered his take on Dish without being asked directly. Goldman analyst Brett Feldman asked him about Verizon plans for acquiring additional spectrum. Feldman said he appreciated Shammo couldn’t talk about the incentive auction. “Don’t ask me about Dish, either,” Shammo shot back. “The answer is no.”

Wireless industry lawyers and analysts at the CTIA meeting in Las Vegas last week were mostly bearish on the outlook for the TV incentive auction. With Dish Network’s pursuit of 600 MHz spectrum in doubt, and Comcast not expected to be a major player, industry observers said the three major national carriers that are bidding, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, all have to be concerned about their balance sheets and may not push prices that much higher than the current bids. The reverse auction's second phase starts Tuesday (see 1609120064).

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC doesn't appear poised to take on rules for a high-frequency spectrum auction, providing carriers with more spectrum for 5G, agency and industry officials said at the CTIA annual meeting. CTIA President Meredith Baker during a keynote Wednesday asked the FCC to get started on the auction while Tom Wheeler is still chairman (see 1609070033).

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC is making the spectrum available it will need to launch 5G, but backhaul remains a big issue, Chairman Tom Wheeler told the CTIA annual conference. He didn’t offer any rosy predictions for the TV incentive auction, promising only that it will determine whether 600 MHz spectrum is worth more to carriers than to broadcasters. CTIA President Meredith Baker urged the FCC to schedule an auction of high-frequency spectrum while Wheeler is still chairman. Wheeler was president of CTIA from 1992 to 2004.

Stage one of the forward part of the TV incentive auction closed Tuesday, at $22.4 billion in net proceeds. Supply and demand hit an equilibrium in the largest markets, triggering the FCC bringing the stage to a close, under rules approved for the auction, in the final round of the day. The auction had slowed considerably in recent days. A stage closes when there's no more excess demand for Category 1 blocks in the top 40 partial economic areas (PEAs), the size of the license being sold in the auction.

“Timing of availability” of ATSC 3.0 receivers will depend primarily on how quickly the FCC moves to authorize use of 3.0's physical transmission layer, America’s Public TV Stations, CTA and NAB told the FCC in Aug. 2 meetings with members of the Media Bureau, Office of Engineering and Technology and International Bureau, NAB said in a joint ex parte filing Thursday in docket 16-142. The associations want the FCC to launch a rulemaking on the transition by Oct. 1, they told the commission in reply comments in late June (see 1606280068). Consumer equipment manufacturers are unlikely to begin building ATSC 3.0 receivers into their products until the FCC “allows the voluntary use of the standard and there is something for those receivers to receive,” the ex parte filing said. Attendees included Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, CTA Senior Vice President-Research and Standards Brian Markwalter, APTS CEO Patrick Butler and NAB officials including General Counsel Rick Kaplan. ATSC 3.0 receiver costs "will fall over time as the standard becomes more widely used and consumer demand spurs broader manufacture of Next Generation TV receivers,” said NAB. CTIA’s concerns are “unfounded” about the potential for ATSC 3.0 to interfere with wireless operations in the 600 MHz band, the groups told the commission. “CTIA supports the broadcast industry’s efforts to evolve, as long as it does not delay or disrupt the use of new 600 MHz licenses purchased at auction,” Scott Bergmann, vice president-regulatory affairs, emailed us Monday through a spokeswoman. CTIA used the identical language in its June 27 reply comments to summarize its position on ATSC 3.0. Further testing of the interference potential between wireless LTE and ATSC 3.0 “is unlikely to provide useful results,” APTS, CTA and NAB told the FCC. “There is no technical reason to believe that ATSC 3.0 creates a higher risk of potential inter-service interference” than the existing ATSC 1.0 service, they said.

Dish Network might use some or all the $2.5 billion it hopes to raise in a convertible note offering in the broadcast incentive auction. The company said in a news release Wednesday that proceeds from its debt offering announced the previous day "are intended to be used for strategic transactions, which may include wireless and spectrum-related strategic transactions, and for other general corporate purposes." In a note to investors Tuesday, Citigroup analyst Jason Bazinet said Dish's fundraising may point to its thinking it can buy spectrum in the 600 MHz auction below the spectrum's intrinsic value, with the longer-term goal of selling the company to an existing wireless company.

Bidirectional sharing, in which federal agencies could access some commercial spectrum, got a plug from the FCC’s top engineer this week, but progress has been slow on the issue, despite a multiyear push by DOD, industry observers said. The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee approved a report on the topic in June (see 1606080050), but the net effect was to call for a multiday, multistakeholder workshop. CSMAC members and others told us Wednesday that bidirectional sharing raises many difficult issues that won't be addressed overnight.

Public interest advocates met with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to express disappointment that the draft spectrum frontiers order “reportedly allocates” all but 600 MHz of more than 3,000 MHz in the 28, 37 and 39 GHz bands to exclusive licensing over wide geographic areas, said a filing on the meeting. Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, and Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, met with Clyburn and staff. “Exclusive wide-area licensing by auction is a poor fit with the propagation characteristics of millimeter wave spectrum that is inherently intended for small cell deployments in localized, high-traffic areas in urban cores and busy indoor venues,” they told Clyburn. “If a few large carriers foreclose access to 80 percent or more of these [millimeter wave] frequencies, both outdoors and indoors, the likely outcome will be to leave the spectrum fallow in the vast majority of the country and in tens of millions of homes, businesses and community anchor institutions.” The order should also allocate at least half of the 37 to 37.6 GHz spectrum for shared, general authorized access, "or its equivalent," said the filing in docket 14-177.

Shure explained its opposition to an FCC order extending the Section 15.2031 prohibition on standard antenna jacks and connectors to wireless mics. “Wireless microphones are not practical candidates for aftermarket power amplifiers and as such do not create concerns regarding human safety or interference due to designs utilizing standard connectors,” Shure said. “Application of the Part 15 antenna connector rule to unlicensed wireless microphones would significantly inhibit manufacturing, raise consumer costs, and cause user confusion, thus complicating the transition of wireless microphones to the new 600 MHz band plan as a result of the broadcast Incentive Auction.” Body-worn wireless mics are often affixed “on or under the performer’s clothing or costume, mounted on an instrument, or, in theatrical productions frequently hidden in the performer’s hair,” the company said. “The microphone is then connected by a cable to a compact, body-worn transmitter that is also often concealed. The microphone and transmitter system must maintain an extremely small form factor to avoid restricting the performer’s freedom of motion.” There is little possibility anyone would affix a high-gain antenna to a Part 15 wireless mic, Shure said in docket 14-165.