Frontline Moving Forward on 700 MHz; Google Awaits Rules

Many had expected the FCC’s decision to be the end of Frontline, but company refuses to pack up and go home. Though the FCC declined to require wholesaling and was silent on changes to the designated-entity rules, “we can roll up our sleeves and get to work building the business of our dreams,” said Frontline CEO Haynes Griffin.

Frontline’s business plan called on the commission to create a new 10 MHz block of spectrum and couple that with some of public safety’s spectrum for a public-private partnership. It was disclosed in a February petition to the FCC (CD Feb 27 p2). The winner of the 10 MHz nationwide block would build a nationwide, interoperable, fourth- generation public safety wireless network. Frontline said that if it won the spectrum it would lease spectrum access on condition that public safety would have priority access in emergencies. To accomplish its plan, Frontline needed the FCC to create a new block of spectrum, create the public- private partnerships, allow wholesale in the block and waive the designated-entity rules so it could lease to big players.

The FCC created the nationwide 10 MHz block, the D- block, for a public-private partnership. “Much of the public-private partnership that we scratched out made it,” Frontline Chairman Janice Obuchowski told us.

The FCC required a form of open access, “no lock, no block,” but in a different block of spectrum, the C-block, and it didn’t require wholesaling in any block. Wholesaling is important to Frontline’s business plan and for public safety to use the latest equipment and services, Obuchowski said. Frontline will ask the FCC to reverse its decision through a petition for reconsideration, she said.

The reserve price may also need to be revisited through reconsideration, Obuchowski said. Requiring bids to reach a threshold makes the victory on open access “highly contingent,” she said. The FCC is requiring bids to total at least $4.6 billion for the C-block and $1.3 billion for the D-block. “If open access is good public policy, why the contingency?” she asked.

With requirements of its business plan split between two blocks, Obuchowski said it was too soon to decide which block it will go after.

The FCC was silent on the changes to the designated- entity rules that Frontline said were necessary. DE remains critical but until the text is released, it’s “dangling,” said Obuchowski. “The big carriers have a clear path to the market.”

There’s enough in what the FCC said at its meeting for Frontline to be optimistic and to go forward, Obuchowski said. She said she liked to quote “her favorite regulatory expert, Mick Jagger: ‘You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.'” Once the order is out, Frontline will re-evaluate its business plan, she said.

Google On the Fence

Google refused to say whether it will participate in the auction, saying it will have to “carefully study the actual text” before making a “definitive” decision. In a blog, Richard Whitt, Google Washington telecom and media counsel, praised the FCC for including no lock, no block, even as he lamented the lack of wholesale and interconnection requirements. “Just two months ago, the notion that the FCC would take such a big step forward to give consumers meaningful choice through this auction seemed unlikely at best,” wrote Whitt. The commission “made real, if incomplete progress.”

Google told us that it never said it wouldn’t bid if all four of its desired licensing conditions weren’t adopted. The company refused to comment on one wireless industry observer’s observation that it got what it wanted “as opposed to what they were asking for.” Google said its “actions speak for themselves.”

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told Bloomberg TV’s Money & Politics that the commission didn’t craft its rules to benefit Google. “We didn’t adopt all restrictions they proposed but we also adopted some things we thought were important. This wasn’t designed to help any one particular company.”

Public Safety Thinks Rules ‘Advance Interoperability’

Public safety believes the rules for the public-private partnership will “advance interoperability,” said the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. The rules are “a critical step for the public-safety community in our quest to gain an advanced broadband network that will keep pace with our continually expanding duties.”

The public-private partnership will allow small public- safety agencies to enjoy the same system used by large agencies, said Robert Gurss, director of legal & government affairs for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials. “Harnessing the financial power of the commercial sector through the public-private partnership model will enable local public safety across the country -- not just in wealthy urban areas -- to gain access to the advanced communications capabilities they need, but might not otherwise be able to afford due to public budgetary constraints,” Gurss said.