Sprint Nextel Satisfied with Early 800 MHz Rebanding Progress
800 MHz rebanding is going about as well as expected, given the complexity of the regions completed, a top Sprint Nextel executive said. Of 500 regions in wave 1, about 66 went into alternate dispute resolution when talks failed. About a dozen regions appear headed to the FCC for a decision. The Sprint official spoke on the eve of an 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) report being released today (Thurs.).
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“If this was the State of the Union address I would start out with the state of rebanding is good,” Larry Krevor, Sprint vp in charge of rebanding, said: “We've seen a lot of good progress for a process that started June 27, a new thing which we've all never done before… While there have been some bumps and continue to be some issues that need more attention we certainly don’t want to overshadow the fact that very impressive progress has been made.”
The rebanding grew out of a July 2004 FCC order issued after years of discussions on how to end growing interference between wireless communications in the band and public safety radios. Under the order, Nextel --later taken over by Sprint -- agreed to pay transition costs for public safety licensees to move to the lower 800 MHz band, with commercial licensees consolidated in the upper regions. In return, Nextel gets 10 MHz of spectrum nationwide in the valuable 1.9 GHz band. Nextel agreed to pay at least $3.2 billion and contribute spectrum valued at $1.6 billion. Reconfiguration started June 27 and must be completed with 36 months.
Krevor told us the wave 1 regions, channels 1-120, are “some of the most populated and used regions in the country” and are likely to be among the hardest to address. Wave 2 transitions are well under way, with a number of regions complete, he said. Of the 3 waves needed to clear the first 120 channels, Sprint has reached agreement in about 60% of negotiations, he said.
On Jan. 12, public safety agencies wrote the FCC griping about problems many agencies have had negotiating with Sprint to pay for reconfiguration planning (CD Jan 17 p1). Krevor said a template from the TA for calculating planning costs is helping to address those concerns. “With the template at least you have all the information you need and then it’s just a question of looking at specific line items and seeing whether those are reasonable and supported or not,” Krevor said: “I am very optimistic that that has and will continue to improve the planning funding process.”
Besides, the FCC changed method, sending planning funding agreements directly to the TA for review, Krevor said. “Early review by the TA also will help to improve the planning funding process,” he said: “Of the planning funding requests that have come in to us, the vast majority now either have been rolled up into a previous retuning agreement and signed or are either at the TA for approval or in the final stages for approval.” Krevor termed the problem relatively minor, with only about 8% of wave 1 licensees seeking planning funding.
Sprint in Dec. asked for a retroactive “blanket delay” of the June 27 start date, so it would have time to complete the reconfiguration of complex regions first in line. In Jan., the Wireless Bureau denied that request but said the TA and the FCC still could consider requests from individual licensees case by case (CD Feb 1 p9).
That decision wasn’t a setback for Sprint, Krevor said. “The Commission has been very clear it wants to hold the line on the overall end date,” he said. “We can certainly look to more targeted modifications of the time frame where it makes sense for specific markets or a specific wave… We're comfortable with that.”