Competitive carriers formed a new coalition, SaveWirelessChoice, to fight against what they see as Verizon and AT&T domination of the wireless market. Initial members include Comptel, the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, C Spire, Dish Network, NTCA, the Rural Wireless Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and other companies and associations. “The members of SaveWirelessChoice are united by a single issue that holds massive consequences for U.S. consumers, businesses and the entire broadband economy -- and that is whether the future of wireless will be dominated by a duopoly or by competition,” said CCA President Steve Berry. The 600 MHz spectrum offered in the TV incentive auction is “the last prime spectrum real estate available,” the group said in a news release. “It is critical to ensure that smaller wireless providers have fair access to enough low-band spectrum to meaningfully compete against the country’s two largest carriers -- AT&T and Verizon -- who already own nearly three quarters of this valuable spectrum nationwide.” Public Knowledge joined the Save Wireless Choice Coalition, the group said in a news release Monday. “We can’t let AT&T and Verizon, the two largest carriers, completely dominate the wireless market by buying up all the spectrum licenses,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “This lack of competition drives prices up for consumers and encourages carriers to overlook updating their own networks.” Mobile Future fired back. “As consumer demand for mobile connectivity skyrockets, all wireless carriers need access to additional spectrum to support the millions of data hungry consumers devouring exponentially more bandwidth each year," the group said. "With Sprint leading the spectrum holdings pack and T-Mobile loudly touting more spectrum per subscriber than any other wireless provider, calls to 'help' Sprint and T-Mobile through spectrum set asides at taxpayer expense are misguided and gratuitous.”

U.S. Cellular representatives elaborated on the carrier’s proposal for a point system to help determine which licenses in the 600 MHz band a bidder will be assigned after the TV incentive auction. Northwestern University professor Robert Weller made the proposal in a note attached to a March ex parte filing by U.S. Cellular. “To allow bidders to express preferences without generating payments, the FCC could allocate a supply of, say, 1000 bidding ‘points’ to each bidder,” Weller suggested. “Let the bidders allocate these points across assignments, in order to indicate their preferences. Then either choose an assignment which maximizes some objective function which incorporates the point allocations, or resolve the assignment as if the points were bid amounts, but collect no payments (many colleges handle the allocation of seats in popular courses in this manner).” In the meeting last week, U.S. Cellular argued that the point system would be doable. The system “could be implemented without informing bidders of the spectrum block assignments that remain feasible for them after the auction system has optimized for the ... objectives proposed by the Commission in the Procedures PN,” the carrier said. “Our proposed ‘point system’ likely would not result in a large number of ties after bidders have expressed their preferences for particular spectrum blocks in a” particular market, said the filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268.

The FCC’s designated entity rules need to be revised before the TV incentive auction to ensure that small carriers at least have a shot at winning licenses, Panhandle Telephone Cooperative and Pine Belt Telephone Company said in a filing at the FCC. The small carriers told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel they are interested in buying 600 MHz licenses during the auction, but noted that the track record for small carriers was “dismal” in the recently completed AWS-3 auction. “Of the 70 qualified bidders in the auction, over half (38 or 54.3 percent) were rural telcos or rural telco affiliates, yet only 28.9 percent of the rural entities were successful in winning any licenses. Many rural bidders were completely shut out, and those that were successful won only 25 of 1,611 licenses (1.55 percent).” Despite some larger companies' use of “shell” companies as DEs to buy spectrum with bidding credits, fewer than half the successful rural telco bidders in the AWS-3 were able to qualify under DE rules as small businesses, the two carriers said. The filing was posted by the FCC Friday in docket 10-208.

The FCC should take more steps to ensure communities continue to be served by public broadcasting after the spectrum incentive auction and repacking process, said the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) staff, collectively PTV, in an ex parte notice posted at the commission Wednesday in docket 14-252. PTV met with commission staff Wednesday to discuss noncommercial educational (NCE) broadcasters, the auction and repack, PTV said. PTV urged the commission to grant the petition for reconsideration filed Sept. 15 and to revise its incentive auction rules to ensure at least one NCE reserved channel remains in each community after the auction. The petition presents an auction design that allows broadcasters to volunteer to participate and reserves space for new entrants in case an unserved area develops in the process, PTV said. The commission also should adopt a selection priority for displacement applications of translators that NCE licensees operate, it said. PTV also encouraged the commission to provide a selection priority for NCE translators where mutually exclusive displacement applications are filed. The commission shouldn't assign TV stations in the repurposed 600 MHz band during the repacking process, PTV said. "Placing television stations in the 600 MHz band risks creating many of the same challenges faced with channel 51 for years following the digital transition, but magnified and significantly more complicated due to the combined impact of interrelated geography, frequency, and power level variables," PTV said. A contiguous TV broadcast band should be maintained because of challenges with a repacking plan that combines broadcast and wireless services in the band, PTV said.

Twenty-three non-national wireless carriers represented by the Competitive Carriers Association Wednesday asked the FCC to expand the amount of spectrum set aside for competitors to AT&T and Verizon in the TV incentive auction. The three-block reserve now in the rules for the auction is “too small to enable competitive carriers to secure sufficient spectrum in this important new frequency band,” their letter to the FCC said. “Increasing the size of the reserve helps fulfill Congressional goals and advances the public interest in promoting wireless broadband deployment.” The FCC should expand the maximum size of the reserve to four 10-MHz blocks, while limiting the amount of reserve spectrum that any one bidder can buy to 20 MHz, the small carriers said. CCA’s two biggest members, Sprint and T-Mobile, didn't sign the letter. “The very fact that twenty-three small, reserve-eligible carriers, all of whom are CCA members, have come together to stress the importance of the 600 MHz incentive auction should send a clear message to the Commission that these carriers must have a meaningful opportunity to bid on and win spectrum in the upcoming auction,” said Steve Berry, CCA president, in a news release. "Although some rural carriers buy spectrum and provide service to consumers, CCA's letter is unfortunately more of the same posturing -- rent seeking by certain companies who want to buy at a discount now, decline to build, and then later sell at a profit,” responded Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter. “There is simply no basis for the FCC to increase the size of the reserve."

Verizon could still sit out the TV incentive auction, depending on the rules approved by the FCC, said Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo Tuesday during Verizon’s Q1 earnings call. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office released an estimate Tuesday that net proceeds from the auction will probably be between $10 billion and $40 billion, “with an expected value of $25 billion, the middle of that range.”

The total impairment to 600 MHz licenses in partial economic areas near the Mexican and Canadian borders at a clearing target of 126 MHz would be about 13 percent of MHz/pops nationwide, said an AT&T study the company discussed in a meeting with FCC officials, said an ex parte filing made Tuesday in docket 12-268. With a target of 84 MHz, impairment would be 11.6 percent, it said. “AT&T discussed these results along with the proposals that AT&T has made in its comments in this proceeding, particularly AT&T’s recommendation that the Commission should avoid repacking any U.S. based broadcasters in the 600 MHz band,” the carrier said. “The unavoidable impairments represented by the TV allotments held by Canada and Mexico already will cover a substantial percentage of the MHz/pops in the 600 MHz band.” The FCC’s proposed auction methodology is based on the assumption that the blocks offered for sale will be fungible, AT&T said. “Accordingly, the Commission should offer only one class of spectrum in the clock phase, with no or very light (perhaps 10 percent or less) impairments, to make the objects in the clock phase workably fungible.”

The Wi-Fi Alliance asked the FCC to “maximize” use of the TV spectrum for unlicensed operations as it finalizes rules for the TV incentive auction. The alliance said in a filing the FCC’s record demonstrates broad recognition of the importance of unlicensed spectrum. “Overly conservative requests to protect particular services, beyond what is necessary to reasonably guard against harmful interference, should not defeat the opportunity to create additional critical capacity for unlicensed applications,” the group said. There's disagreement about the protection licensed wireless services require from adjacent unlicensed devices, the group said. “On one side, V-COMM suggests that an out-of-band emission limit of -89 dBm/100 kHz into 600 MHz downlink spectrum and a 5 megahertz buffer is required for white space devices operating at the permitted 40 mW power level,” the alliance said. “These limitations would effectively eliminate the ability for white space devices to use the guard bands and duplex gap.” The filing was posted by the FCC Wednesday in docket 12-268. Also in the docket, representatives of wireless mic maker Shure said the company “reaffirmed” support for the FCC’s proposal to authorize wireless microphone operations in the 600 MHz duplex gap and guard bands, in a meeting with FCC officials. “Shure reemphasized that the duplex gap and guard bands would provide urgently needed spectrum for wireless microphone users given the looming repurposing of the broader 600 MHz Band,” Shure said.

LAS VEGAS -- Despite its large outlay in the AWS-3 auction, AT&T will participate in the 600 MHz auction, said AT&T Vice President Federal Regulatory Joan Marsh at a panel on the TV incentive auction at the NAB Show Monday. “AT&T has never sat out a major auction, we won’t sit out this one,” Marsh said. That affirms predictions by Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition Executive Director Preston Padden, who also spoke on the auction at multiple panels Monday.

An FCC public notice was published Friday in the Federal Register seeking comment on how the commencement of operations for new 600 MHz band wireless licensees after the TV incentive auction should be defined (see 1503260047) . Comments are due May 1, replies May 18.