The PCS H-block auction will take place as planned in January, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said emphatically following his first meeting as chairman Thursday. The comments come days after both Sprint and T-Mobile made clear they were taking themselves out of contention for H-block spectrum, leaving Dish Network as the one self-identified competitor (CD Nov 14 p4). Wheeler said he still expected a competitive auction. Initial applications to participate in the auction are due at the commission Friday.
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said at a Wells Fargo conference Wednesday that the carrier will be an active participant in spectrum auctions set for 2014 “and beyond,” Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said in an email to investors. De la Vega said AT&T is comfortable with its current spectrum position, but he believes it’s “absolutely necessary to acquire more spectrum,” Frizsche said. AT&T currently predicts its own LTE network will be completed in summer 2014.
The FCC does not need to impose spectrum aggregation limits in order to shore up competition, Mobile Future said in a white paper released Friday. “There is no evidence that continuing to allow all wireless companies the opportunity to fully participate in spectrum auctions has prevented smaller carriers from acquiring the spectrum they need to compete,” the group said (http://bit.ly/HLzF4r). “There is an abundance of evidence from prior auctions and secondary market transactions that the FCC’s current approach of conducting case-by-case reviews of spectrum holdings has successfully balanced the public interest in encouraging a vibrant, innovative mobile marketplace and promoting a broad distribution of spectrum licenses."
AT&T and T-Mobile have long been at odds over spectrum aggregation limits in the incentive auction of TV spectrum, but both companies found something to agree on this week: that the FCC should at least examine caps in the 700 MHz auction in New Zealand. T-Mobile initially cited the auction as evidence in support of its arguments for limits in the incentive auction (http://bit.ly/1d52UJ4). AT&T Vice President Joan Marsh said there are stark differences between the New Zealand rules and limits sought by T-Mobile. “T-Mobile seeks a limit on all low band spectrum holdings, not just the spectrum newly available at auction,” Marsh wrote in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1biQQma). “New Zealand crafted generally applicable limits that apply only to the spectrum being sold.” T-Mobile’s proposal would also “skew the auction in its favor by limiting only those bidders that exceed its newly-proposed low band cap -- namely AT&T and Verizon Wireless,” Marsh said. “By contrast, New Zealand’s approach treats all bidders equally by imposing a limit on the amount of spectrum any one bidder can acquire.” On Friday, T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham responded on her company’s blog. “AT&T this week acknowledged for the first time that, indeed, it is comfortable with upfront spectrum caps for auctions,” she said (http://bit.ly/1c5Y2lR). “That represents huge progress for AT&T, which has been arguing for months against any limits for the upcoming 600 MHz low-band auction. Although AT&T takes a shot at the filing that pointed out that New Zealand has joined most of the industrialized world in using aggregation limits in spectrum auctions to promote competition, spur innovation and stimulate economic growth, the key take-way from Joan Marsh’s blog is that upfront auction caps, if applied in a fair, nondiscriminatory manner, would be acceptable.”
The incoming team of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is “a senior staff team with deep substantive knowledge of telecom policy and a thorough understanding of the FCC’s inner workings,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said in a statement Tuesday night (http://1.usa.gov/178r3dM). “With this team, he will be able to hit the ground running on the significant issues facing the agency, including strengthening E-Rate, the first-ever voluntary spectrum auctions to fund the first responder communications network, and shaping the ongoing evolution of our communications networks.” Wheeler was sworn in as chairman Monday and announced his staff choices then as well as initial plans to potentially overhaul FCC process (CD Nov 5 p1). House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., applauded Wheeler for taking on such considerations, while calling for congressional action. “I welcome Chairman Wheeler’s openness to looking at ways to improve transparency and accountability for the American people and those that have business before the commission,” Walden said (http://1.usa.gov/1grNuTJ). “In the meantime, we will continue working to reach bipartisan agreement on the FCC Process Reform Act, and similarly hope that the Senate will soon take up the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act, which was unanimously approved by the House this summer."
Sprint is making substantial progress on the buildout of the 2.5 GHz spectrum the carrier got from Clearwire through its Network Vision LTE project, CEO Dan Hesse said on an earnings call Wednesday. Later in the day, Sprint unveiled its new Sprint Spark brand, which it said would offer connection speeds as fast as 1 GHz, with initial speeds of 50-60 Mbps. Sprint acknowledged it lost 360,000 contract subscribers in Q3, which was less than expected based on a consensus estimate. Some of the losses were tied to the carrier’s shutting down its Nextel network on June 30, the company said. Sprint reported net profits of $383 million, compared with a $767 million loss the same quarter last year.
EU telecom regulators have “significant concerns” about the evidence and analysis underlying the proposal for a single telecom market, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) said in a paper (http://bit.ly/19WuR7N) made public Thursday in Europe. While national regulators strongly support targeted harmonization of rules, the European Commission-proposed legislative package risks creating unnecessary complexity and more legal uncertainty, and could hamper investment and competition, it said. The EC hasn’t adequately shown that its proposals would generate value in European communications markets, and some of its ideas could be counterproductive, it said. The package must be based on an accurate diagnosis of market problems, and some parts of it “represent a significant shift in policy orientations, without proper consideration of its far-reaching consequences,” BEREC said. Regulators criticized the analysis for, among other things, overlooking that actual average broadband download speeds in the EU are much higher than in the U.S. across technologies, and for failing to refer to the dynamics of next-generation networks, which are being rolled out at an increasing pace. The EC also claimed that Europe trails other regions on 4G deployment when the main operators are investing heavily in very high-speed mobile networks, and when Western Europe has more operational LTE networks than any other region, it said. Although it shares EC high-level objectives, “the unbalanced picture of the EU market situation and the unsound assessment of problems allegedly stemming from the current regulatory framework make for a set of proposals which BEREC considers to be disproportionate, and in some cases counterproductive to their stated aims,” it said. Concerns included: (1) The proposal signals a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the EC and governments, BEREC and national telecom regulators. (2) The proposed EC veto power over competition conditions set by national authorities is unjustified and detrimental. (3) The plan to synchronize spectrum assignment procedures to enable operators to bid for spectrum in all or many EU countries could make it harder for players to take part in several spectrum auctions at the same time, given the capital and resource commitment involved, and could give large operators a competitive advantage. (4) The idea to convert national telecom regulators’ duty to “promote end users’ rights to access content” into a “hard-wired users’ right ’to access'” needs a rethink because it raises concerns about enforceability, given the number of actors involved in the process. Any net neutrality legal obligation imposed on ISPs should be based on a reasonable interpretation of the quality expected for the transportation of applications. (5) The proposed “unpicking” of the carefully negotiated roaming regulation within a year of its adoption and only a few months before one of its key provisions comes into effect “substantially undermines regulatory certainty.” Moreover, there’s nothing to stop mobile operators from boosting prices elsewhere to compensate for the proposed “roam like at home” pricing, potentially leaving consumers no better off overall, BEREC said.
The FCC under Chairman nominee Tom Wheeler should make it a point soon after Wheeler and Michael O'Rielly are sworn in to lay out its view of how competition should be regulated, said ex-Chairman Reed Hundt during a Technology Policy Institute panel Tuesday. “Adopting a fundamental competition policy is one of the first orders of business for the new commission.” In a paper (http://stanford.io/16KZBGr) referenced repeatedly at the event, he said the FCC should let the market work, but be ready to step in with regulation to address bottlenecks and protect competition as needed (CD Sept 30 p11). AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said the commission should focus instead on large communications policy projects like the IP transition and the incentive auction. “Where I get nervous is when the FCC tries to operate like a mini antitrust agency,” said Cicconi. “They're not the expert agency when it comes to antitrust and competition."
As Columbus Day approaches, the Senate hasn’t approved the two FCC nominees. The government shutdown has hurt the ability of the FTC and others to carry out their responsibilities, said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in a report from the committee majority staff (http://1.usa.gov/1atWQYB). He released the report Friday in conjunction with a committee hearing on the economic effects of the shutdown, which mentioned the slowdowns at the FCC and FTC. Both agencies await Senate confirmation of pending nominees, a process delayed by the shutdown.
AT&T and T-Mobile executives are frustrated by government shutdown, now well into its second week, they said at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference. The FCC’s work on spectrum auctions, getting spectrum from the Department of Defense, the broadcaster incentive auction -- “all that work has stopped,” said Thomas Sugrue, senior vice president-government affairs for T-Mobile. “One week? Sure, we can all make that up,” he said. “But once it gets a second week, and if we're talking about a third, there could be some real negative impacts on the timing of that.” T-Mobile is “fortunate that we don’t have an intensive, major deal pending,” like AT&T’s bid to acquire Leap Wireless, Sugrue said.