FCC Pushing Hard to Make June AWS Auction Goal—Staffers
SAN JOSE -- An FCC aide indicated notice for the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction could appear by early Feb. Roy Knowles, senior wireless telecom auctions analyst, said Fri. at a Wireless Communications Assn. (WCA) conference if he were a bettor, he'd say “the next couple weeks should bring some kind of announcement.”
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WCA counsel Paul Sinderbrand had challenged FCC staffers on chances of meeting Chmn. Martin’s goal of a June auction for the spectrum in the 1.7 and 2.1 GHz bands -- given all the tasks to be done in the meantime, including fulfilling a 120-day notice requirement and presumably acting on “designated entity” benefits for small businesses, which large firms are said to have exploited. He asked if it’s “becoming a fall auction instead of a summer auction,” or one not practicable until Aug. “It’s time to start planning vacations, if nothing else,” Sinderbrand said.
“Is it getting hot in here?” Knowles joked, saying that besides Martin, Comrs. Adelstein and Copps have voiced desire for a prompt AWS auction. So “behind the scenes… we are working very hard at making that [a June auction] happen,” he said: “We are still within the realm of possibility to make that happen.”
It shouldn’t be assumed DE rules will change before the auction, said Mary Shultz, deputy chief of the FCC’s Broadband Div. To Sinderbrand’s statement that the commissioners had made the changes a priority, she replied “the 8th floor is pushing” this auction as well.
FCC rules probably will “have to address a reserve price” in the AWS auction, due to Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act requirements and cost to relocate govt. spectrum users, said Knowles. If bids don’t reach the reserve price, the auction won’t count and another must be held, he said. The reserve must be 110% of relocation costs, recently and drastically downgraded to below $1 billion, Shultz said.
The FCC won’t allow time division duplexing use in the 1710-1755 MHz due to risk of interference with govt. stations there, Shultz said. Robert Syputa, senior analyst-Maravedis research, criticized this and other Commission technology conditions as relics of an era of less dynamic technologies. The FCC should be more hands- off on spectrum use, such as with cognitive radio, he said: “I hope there’s flexibility put into the system, so all the new digital technologies make much better use of the spectrum” than historically has been the case. Technologists face challenges avoiding interference, but “the challenge of the regulators is to get out of the way and let that happen,” Syputa said.