Copps Says FCC Must Find Alternative if D-Block Sale Falters
With the outlook increasingly bleak for a minimum required bid to win the 700 MHz D-block license, Commissioner Michael Copps said Tuesday that, no matter what happens, the FCC will have to make certain that public safety has a national, interoperable broadband network. At our deadline, the only bid for the 10 MHz national license was the $472,000 bid made on day one, which is well short of the minimum $1.33 billion. No company has come forward to replace Frontline Wireless, which announced before the auction began that it would not make the down payment required to participate in the auction.
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If no bidder meets the reserve price the agency will have to make key decisions after the first stage of the auction ends, including whether to reauction the band without the requirements it be used as part of a public safety network. One alternative would be to lower the reserve price and reduce the build out requirements, sources said. That discussion is unlikely to begin on the eighth floor of the FCC before the auction concludes.
“All I would do is reemphasize what I said about the urgency of public safety. Protecting the people is always the first obligation of a public servant,” Copps told reporters over coffee. “We have got to get this system built. It’s going on seven years since Sept. 11. We don’t have that public safety interoperable network… We have to get it done. I am hopeful that we can get it done through this public sector-private sector partnership approach.”
Copps noted that the FCC has already squandered opportunities. “It would have been nice back in 2001 if we would have made a commitment to build a public safety, publicly funded broadband network and got it all over then,” he said. “I think we could have gotten the money to do that at that particular time.” Copps expects the Hill to take an interest if the FCC does not move forward without a push. “I think Congress will be watching this closely,” he said. “I think there will be oversight on it. We shouldn’t need a lot of oversight and I don’t think we do.”
Copps said the FCC has no alternative plan for reauctioning the D-block if bidders don’t exceed the reserve price. He declined to speculate on whether the FCC had erred in the rules it devised for the band, except to note that he had questioned when the rules were approved whether the agency needed to impose separate reserve requirements for each band. “It probably would have been sufficient to say we're going to raise the amount [the auction] was scored by the Office of Management and Budget… or whoever scored it,” he said. “That’s not the decision that was taken. We'll just have to look at the end of the day at the outcome of the auction and go back and see what worked and didn’t work.”
USF Reform Possible
Copps hopes the FCC will approve Universal Service Fund reforms by year-end, he said. At the very least, the agency should have proposals teed up in early 2009, he said. “I'd like to see something done between now and the end of the year,” Copps said of USF. “We've put these items out. We've developed a good record. The joint board put a lot of effort into this. I'm a member of the joint board and I think we presented some reasonable ideas. I didn’t agree with all of them obviously.”
Few changes are needed, Copps said. He sees “widespread agreement” that USF should support broadband and broad accord on the need to address the identical support rule, possibly eliminating it, he said. Before the FCC can approve a “real fix” to USF, a federal law is needed subjecting intrastate and interstate connections to USF fees. The FCC must use audits and oversight to ensure that there is “credibility and integrity in the system,” he said.
“I don’t know if you have to do a whole lot more, get into reverse auctions and all that sort of stuff,” Copps said. “Let’s get it out, put it out there and have a record, try to move it… This has been sitting around a long, long period of time and I was encouraged that the joint board finally got recommendations in and I think we need to take advantage of that.”
Copps backs a hearing, once proposed by Martin, on early termination fees wireless carriers and other FCC-regulated companies charge. “I, obviously, always support more consumer choice,” he said. “The idea of doing something on early termination fees is an appealing idea. I do think we need to understand in pretty great detail exactly how they work -- the problems that they may create.”