The FCC should rethink a proposal that would force licensed, professional wireless mics to exit parts of the 600 MHz band earlier than other users, wireless mic maker Shure said in comments. These mics should be able to operate as long as low-power TV stations and TV translator stations, Shure said. “Wireless microphones have successfully operated, on a secondary basis, on unassigned channels in the TV spectrum for decades,” Shure said. “Wireless microphone use has grown rapidly and today, these devices provide critical support to a wide range of sectors including TV broadcasting, news casting, theater, live music, sports, religious, civic and academic institutions.” The transition timeline is “critical to users in these sectors and to wireless microphone manufacturers compelled to ensure that the dramatic change in available UHF spectrum resulting from the Incentive Auction and TV broadcast rebanding does not disrupt existing operation of wireless microphones or stymie continued availability of high quality wireless microphone equipment,” Shure said. It filed reply comments in the proceeding defining the official start date of operations for carriers that buy licenses in the TV incentive auction (see 1505190047). The comments were posted Tuesday in docket 12-268.

Sprint said the FCC should make changes to the rules for the TV incentive auction, which set aside “reserve” spectrum blocks for carriers that don't already own significant amounts of low-band spectrum. The FCC approved rules for the set-aside at its May 15, 2014, meeting (see 1405160030). The FCC “established a reserve to lessen the likelihood that the two largest providers, with their vast resources, could foreclose their much smaller rivals from obtaining 600 MHz spectrum in the auction to better compete in the downstream mobile broadband market,” Sprint said. “The Commission set the right goal, but its implementation plan could create the very foreclosure risk it intended to prevent.” Sprint proposed that the FCC change its rules to establish the reserve blocks at the start of the forward auction, rather than toward its end, and allow eligible bidders to bid on the blocks from the start of the auction. “The Commission could adopt these two changes quickly, without delaying the auction or extensively revising the proposed auction processes,” Sprint said. “With these modifications, the Commission can help ensure that consumers ultimately benefit from the 600 MHz auction by giving competitive carriers a fair shot at getting the low-band spectrum they need to compete more effectively with the two largest providers.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler expects the incentive auction to be well underway a year from now with active broadcaster participation, he said Wednesday. He also defended the net neutrality order as creating a flexible, not dictatorial, broadband Internet framework. The planned takeover of Suddenlink by a European company showed that the regulation wasn’t chilling investment in the U.S., he said in a Q&A session with Accenture Managing Director Shahid Ahmed at the management consulting firm’s Network Summit.

The Competitive Carriers Association urged the FCC to change its proposal for defining the commencement of operations for carriers that buy licenses in the TV incentive auction. CCA’s stance put the group in agreement with CTIA (see 1505180034) and AT&T, a nonmember. But Google discounted claims that carriers need to shut down other operations relatively early in the buildout process. NAB and public broadcasters lined up with Google. Reply comments on the commencement of operations rules were posted by the FCC Monday and Tuesday in docket 12-268.

The FCC should reject a proposed incentive auction rule that would prevent a bidder from reducing the quantity of blocks it demands in a category if the reduction will result in aggregate demand falling below the available supply of licenses in the category, said AT&T. Its filing includes a paper written by Yale economics professor Philip Haile. He called the provision a no-excess supply (NES) restriction. “For many bidders, licenses are complementary, which means that their per-license valuations are higher for pairs of licenses than for a single license,” the paper said. The NES restriction “makes it dangerous for a bidder to risk bidding any price above” its lower single-license valuation, he wrote. Doing so creates “substantial risk of being forced to choose between two money-losing options: (1) purchase a single license at a price exceeding its standalone value; or (2) buy the pair of licenses at a total price exceeding their value.” Because of the risk, bidders may bid more conservatively and drop their bids earlier, he said. A second paper by Haile opposes a U.S. Cellular proposal for using a point system to determine which licenses in the 600 MHz band a bidder will be assigned after the TV incentive auction (see 1504240023). U.S. Cellular’s proposal to give each bidder the same number of points in each market “would give a systematic and unwarranted advantage to bidders that have fewer feasible allocations,” Haile wrote in the second filing, which also is in docket 12-268. The carrier’s alternative proposal, in which bidders would “score” their preferences in each market, “would systematically disadvantage bidders seeking to build larger (e.g., 10x10 MHz) blocks of spectrum, and such a system also would not provide enough information about the intensity of bidders’ preferences,” Haile said.

FCC rules for the TV incentive auction must prioritize the rights of companies that buy spectrum in the auction to build out those frequencies, CTIA said in reply comments on a public notice on defining the term “commence operations” in the context of the 600 MHz band transition rules. The FCC should “err on the side of protecting primary uses” of the spectrum, said the filing posted Monday in docket 12-268.. Carriers should be able to “engineer and test their networks free from interference by defining ‘commence operations’ as the moment of first transmission on the licensed spectrum,” said the association. “This will ensure that the band is cleared of secondary uses early enough in the testing process that essential network testing functions are not subject to interference.” After carriers buy licenses in the auction, they have lots to do to build out their networks and test services and equipment before service begins, CTIA said. The 600 MHz licensees face a tough spectrum environment, with white spaces devices, low-power TV and wireless mics also using the 600 MHz spectrum, the wireless association said. “These secondary operations have the potential to interfere with the testing and use of licensed spectrum if permitted to operate in close proximity to licensed wireless transmissions.”

The AWS-3 auction is over but “the heavy lifting” is just getting started as industry and the government work to clear the spectrum bought in the auction, said Paige Atkins, NTIA associate administrator for spectrum management, at the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee meeting (see 1505120040) Tuesday. Relocation could take up to 10 years, she said: “We expect significant sharing to occur in the interim and a lot of coordination and collaboration to occur during that time.” Atkins said the Competitive Carriers Association and CTIA will host an AWS-3 government and information exchange June 4, which will be open to winning bidders in the auction. “This is to begin the informal dialogue around expectations, processes and tools that will facilitate the transition,” she said, noting it will be similar to coordination after the 2008 AWS-1 auction. NTIA and the Institute of Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) are expanding their spectrum monitoring pilot in the 3.5 GHz band, spectrum set aside for shared use, Atkins said. They're working with federal agencies to host four additional sensors and potentially expand coverage beyond 3.5 GHz, she said. ITS, in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is also developing a measured spectrum occupancy database, she said. “That’s intended to make the sensor data available on a near real-time basis to support policy planning, engineering, and eventually, potentially, dynamic sharing.” Spectrum for international mobile telecom (IMT) is the top priority of the U.S. at the World Radiocommunications Conference later this year, Atkins said. “Go figure,” she said. “The challenge for mobile broadband services is the same internationally as nationally,” she said: “The most suitable bands are already being used by other services for things like broadcasting” and satellite links. The U.S. focus is on sharing, she said. The U.S. supports sharing in the 3.5 GHz band, the 600 MHz spectrum being offered in the TV incentive auction and the L band, at 1424-1518 MHz, which the U.S. supports but doesn't plan to implement here, she said. The second priority is spectrum for beyond-line-of sight command and control link for unmanned aircraft systems. A likely topic of the WRC in 2019 is a look at the use of bands above 6 GHz, she said.

The “economic value” of the 645.5 MHz of licensed spectrum in play in the U.S. is almost $500 billion, CTIA said in a report released Monday, written by the Brattle Group. Economists see the social benefits from licensed spectrum as running at least 10 to 20 times the spectrum's direct economic value, the report said.

How the FCC defines the term “commence operations” will have major implications for the success of the TV incentive auction, CTIA said in comments responding to a March 26 public notice. “It is essential that the Commission adopt a standard that is readily understood by all stakeholders and leaves no doubt as to the regulatory obligations of affected parties.” Among CTIA’s suggestions is that the FCC ensures wireless licensees have access to the spectrum they buy “free from interference, including to test their networks, by tying the definition of ‘commence operations’ to the initial transmission on the spectrum by licensee.” Wireless licensees should also have “primary control” over the notice process, CTIA said. The definition has implications for many other parts of the post-auction transition, the group said. “Before commencing operation wireless carriers must provide 120 days’ notice to Low Power Television [LPTV] and TV translator stations, and must coordinate with the National Science Foundation regarding operations at permanent fixed locations near certain radioastronomy service observatories,” CTIA said. “Critically, the date of a 600 MHz wireless licensee’s commencement of operations triggers the obligation of the secondary users of the 600 MHz band (namely LPTV, TV translator, broadcast auxiliary service, and TV white space device operations) to vacate the band.” The comments were posted Tuesday in docket 12-268.

Almost half way through 2015, with the TV incentive auction to start next year, Sprint still hasn't made any decisions about whether it will participate in the auction, CEO Marcelo Claure said on a call with analysts Tuesday. Sprint also said Tuesday it has reduced sharply post-paid churn -- the measure of customers leaving for another provider. Sprint sat out the FCC's last big auction of mid-band AWS-3 spectrum.