Google Exploring Various 700 MHz Strategies
Google is talking with “a variety of folks” about various options and strategies of using the 700 MHz C-block spectrum including “some who have opposed us vociferously at the FCC,” Richard Whitt, Google Washington telecommunications and media counsel, told a joint luncheon of the Federal Communications Bar Association wireless and cyberspace practice groups. Some of the strategies include “a joint bidding consortia” or forming joint ventures post auction, Whitt said.
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Whitt said “it will be a challenge” for Google to win the C-block spectrum, a 22 MHz block that’s available nationwide only by combining several regional licenses. The FCC got it “three-fourths right” when it developed its 700 MHz rules, Whitt said. Google will “abide by the FCC’s conditions and endeavor for the other two,” he said referring to the wholesale provisions the FCC didn’t mandate for the C- block.
The device and application access rules are under fire at the FCC as Verizon is lobbying to get them overturned, according to sources. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin may be trying to gut the access provisions by issuing a declaratory ruling rolling them back, they said.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps seemed cool to this idea when he spoke with reporters Thursday morning. “If the effort here is to kind of eviscerate what we managed to get into it with the 700 MHz order with regard to Carterfone and all of those things I will be looking at that with a lot of interest,” Copps said. Whatever Martin may be proposing hasn’t been circulated yet, he said. “I haven’t had an opportunity to see what exactly is being proposed. It wasn’t around here even last night,” he said.
Verizon officials met with Martin and various staff Sept. 17, according to ex partes filed with the commission. During the meeting, Verizon reiterated its problems with the FCC’s C-block rules.
At the FCBA luncheon Frontline Wireless Chairman Janice Obuchowski said Verizon was trying to go around the reconsideration process. “This ex parte raised a lot of eyebrows, including our own,” Obuchowski said. “At the same time we were standing at the front door waiting for reconsideration, another party was going through the back door.” Late Thursday, Frontline asked the commission to investigate whether Verizon should be sanctioned for “abuse of commission procedures.” Verizon’s ex parte was “deliberately obfuscatory,” said Frontline.
Reconsideration petitions on the 700 MHz rules were filed Monday (CD Sept 26 p6) but Verizon filed an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Sept. 10 (CD Sept 14 p7). Verizon can’t reconsider something that you already appealed, both Whitt and Obuchowski said.
On a separate issue, the Public Safety Spectrum Trust will be the public safety licensee because “no other organization” meets the FCC’s qualifications. “There isn’t really another option,” said Harlin McEwen, president of the trust. McEwen wouldn’t wade into the debate regarding whether the public-private partnership should be “a new build” as proposed by Frontline or use existing infrastructure. The public safety licensee doesn’t want its partner, the winner of the nationwide D-block license, “mad at us. There are pluses and minuses” to both, McEwen said. - - Heather Forsgren-Weaver