A new coalition representing high tech companies and DBS operator...

for EchoStar and DirecTV to put together a national wireless broadband network. Intel, Yahoo, Google, Skype and Access Spectrum signed off on the proposal with the DBS operators. The companies urged the FCC to divide the 60 MHz of spectrum to be sold into supersized regional (REAG) licenses and midsized major economic area licenses, but not the small license areas sought by small carriers. The group also said the FCC should allow package bidding, under which a company could bid for a national license across all regions. If such a bid were higher than the sum of bids for individual licenses, the national bidder would win. “This would essentially enable a 3rd pipe into the home,” said a supporter of the plan: “Most of the other parties in this docket are looking to fill in footprints or small geographic areas rather than provide a 3rd pipe nationwide… It’s really a story about new entrants and new technologies, and it’s a WiMAX story because you need 10 MHz blocks to do WiMAX.” The group said the 15 MHz paired commercial allocation in the upper 700 MHz band should be reconfigured into a 16.5 MHz paired allocation -- to be divided into a 11 MHz pair and a 5.5 MHz pair. “The use of 5.5 MHz ‘building blocks’ gives an immediate 10% increase in bandwidth compared to 5 MHz blocks,” the group said in a filing at the Commission: “This allows more capable next- generation broadband network performance, going into the auction.” The filing argued that package bidding would allow companies to more efficiently buy spectrum: “The use of package bidding and this licensing scheme would promote new entry by permitting flexible business plans and preventing a company from blocking nationwide entry simply by acquiring one regional license.”