FCC Chmn. Powell told Rep. Fossella (R-N.Y.) whether Nextel benef...

not to give Nextel spectrum outside the 800 MHz band without an auction under Sec. 309(j) of the Communications Act (CD March 5 p1). Since then, a staff draft item has begun circulating on the 8th floor proposing a plan that would reconfigure spectrum at 800 MHz and give Nextel 10 MHz at 1.9 GHz, but at a price (CD March 11 p1). The point of the plan is to mitigate interference public safety users encounter at 800 MHz. Fossella’s letter had posed questions to Powell about how to mitigate public safety interference, raising concerns about Nextel getting spectrum outside an auction. Powell’s response, sent this week, said Nextel’s iDEN technology “would not benefit by operating in contiguous spectrum: it is a system designed specifically to operate in noncontiguous spectrum.” Powell said that “were Nextel to elect to abandon this technology and change to a technology that requires contiguous spectrum, we would need to assess the cost of the conversion against the benefit gained thereby.” On fitting an auction into a plan to fix interference at 800 MHz, Powell told Fossella that the obligation to auction spectrum comes up in the context of mutually exclusive applications: “The Commission, when the public interest so dictates, may employ ‘engineering solutions, negotiation, threshold qualifications, service regulations and other means to avoid mutual exclusivity.'” The FCC will weigh this and “issue a decision within the bounds of its statutory authority,” he said. Because of public safety implications, the FCC plans to “resolve this matter as expeditiously as possible,” he said. Meanwhile, wireless companies and the United Telecom Council (UTC) ratcheted up pressure on Capitol Hill Wed., voicing concerns at a briefing about the item under consideration on the 8th floor. Fossella said he stood “shoulder-to-shoulder with public safety in my support of rebanding the 800 MHz spectrum and enhancing the communications systems of law enforcement, fire departments and others.” While he said he supported that part of the consensus plan, he shared concerns with some states that the plan has “major flaws.” Fossella said his big concern was that the plan backed by Nextel, the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials and others, didn’t provide enough money for public safety retuning at 800 MHz. In an FCC filing this week CTIA criticized parts of recent Nextel presentations before the FCC, charging the numbers don’t “add up.” Nextel has said that under the consensus plan it would receive spectrum at 1.9 GHz worth $3.33 billion, but that it would make $5.4 billion in spectrum and cash contributions to make the plan work. CTIA argued, “Nextel’s encumbered, non-contiguous non-nationwide spectrum (on a per MHz-pop basis) is worth over 60% more” than “relatively unencumbered spectrum” at 1.9 GHz. At the briefing, Cingular Vp-Federal Relations Brian Fontes cited language in a 1990 waiver the FCC granted to Nextel’s predecessor company that made the company responsible for any interference experienced by public safety systems. The FCC has an obligation to resolve such interference cases, he said: “In large part, where has the FCC been? I think quite frankly they have failed to remedy the problem early on.” Among concerns raised at the briefing by Fontes and others was how the value of spectrum that would be part of a rebanding plan could be determined outside an auction. Meanwhile, UTC, CTIA, the American Gas Assn., the National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn. and 3 other groups wrote President Bush Wed. raising concerns about the consensus plan. They told Bush the plan would allow Nextel “to ’swap’ its patchwork set of channels, enabling it to gain clear and contiguous spectrum nationwide in the 800 MHz band plus 10 MHz of bonus spectrum at 1.9 GHz.” They asked Bush to back an alternative to the consensus plan that “will better serve our nation’s interests.”