BRUSSELS -- EU lawmakers have doubts about European Commission (EC) plans for the digital dividend, members of the European Parliament said Tuesday at the Policy Tracker European Digital Dividend conference. Despite EC assurances that it doesn’t want total harmonization of spectrum at the EU level, MEPs are suspicious of forced coordination, they said, urging that the Commission take a light regulatory approach. Final EC proposals aren’t expected until year’s end.
Mobile satellite services companies are more valuable to Wall Street as spectrum plays than as companies that offer services via spacecraft, several speakers from Wall Street told the Satellite Finance Forum Monday. That should lead to transactions to take advantage of that value, the speakers said.
The FCC is expected to face pressure from small and midsized carriers to open the D-block and sell it for commercial use rather than as a national public safety license, regulatory and industry sources tell us. Pressure is expected to be especially intense since C-block spectrum is selling at an average price of 76 cents per MHz per POP, compared to $2.66 for the B-block, sought in many cases by smaller carriers. Verizon Wireless is by all accounts the likely high bidder for the C-block and, sources say, small carriers are likely to complain that it’s getting the spectrum at a bargain price.
Fighting cuts proposed by President Bush for the eighth straight year, public broadcasters said they would welcome a more secure funding source like the ones enjoyed by their European counterparts. But station executives we interviewed said they hold little hope in the near term of a public- broadcasting trust fund or tax-based funding that would offer a consistent source of funding.
FCC inaction on a roaming “home market exclusion” devalues spectrum licenses, former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth said in a report commissioned by T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s filing came on the sixth day of the 700 MHz auction. Carriers seeking a change in that rule had hoped for agency action before the auction began.
While spectrum auctions are generally considered successful, it may be time for Congress to legislate improvements to the system, a new Congressional Research Service Report says. “Many have questioned whether auction policy should be supplemented more aggressively with other market-driven solutions,” the report said. Administration of the auction process might also be improved, it said. For the immediate future, Congress is likely to focus on questions such as reforming spectrum management and allocation mechanisms, the report said. “Some observers argue that a fully developed policy should take into account issues such as international competitiveness, the communications needs of public safety agencies and the military, the role of wireless technology in economic growth and the encouragement of new technologies that make spectrum use more efficient and beneficial to society as a whole,” the report said.
The number of rural telecom companies offering DSL has grown more than 25 percent since 2003, the National Exchange Carrier Association said. In its annual report on broadband use by members of its traffic sensitive access charge pool, NECA said 1,054 companies provide DSL, up from 814 in 2003, with 681 companies reporting that they use ATM technology, 477 Ethernet technology, 318 broadband wireless, 254 cable modem service and 233 “fiber in the loop.” The survey found more than 400 pool members offering video and 132 more planning to deploy IPTV in 2008 or beyond. More than 60 members’ affiliates took part in spectrum auctions in fall 2006 and spring 2007 to increase wireless capabilities, acquiring more than 80 licenses, NECA said. That number is in addition to more than 400 companies already offering wireless service via previously acquired spectrum, NECA said. The survey involved 1,114 pool members.
FCC file room security needs beefing up, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report based on six months of investigations that ended in September. The inquiry came after news reports on a file containing “non- confidential contract documents” relating to telecommunications service between the U.S. and Haiti was lost from the FCC’s Reference Information Center, the IG said.
Council Tree, along with Bethel Native Corporation and the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, asked the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to force the FCC to rule on their petition for reconsideration on the rules for the advanced wireless services auction, which has been pending since April 2006. Council Tree, on its own, asked the court to review the rules FCC is putting in place for the 700 MHz auction, which are largely based on the AWS auction rules. The pleadings leave open the possibility the court could overturn the AWS auction and delay the 700 MHz auction, scheduled to begin Jan. 24.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The wireless infrastructure industry is recession proof “unless someone is willing to stop communicating,” Crown Castle CEO John Kelly said at the PCIA conference’s Titans of Towers panel. The panel included CEOs from four major wireless infrastructure companies. The executives also discussed the role spectrum auctions, mergers and distributed antenna systems will play in the industry.