Aloha Sees White Spaces as Perfect for Mobile TV
Aloha Partners, the largest holder of 700 MHz licenses in the U.S. until it sold AT&T its spectrum for $2.5 billion, is back. This time it’s pursuing white spaces spectrum that could be used to offer mobile TV. Aloha President Charles Townsend, who met in August with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, is trying to defeat any move to open the spectrum for unlicensed use, as advocated by Microsoft, Intel and Google and other high-tech heavyweights.
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“When we owned 700MHz spectrum, we did a lot of testing of alternative business models,” Townsend said in an interview Wednesday. “Our conclusion was that mobile TV is going to be a very big business, even though conventional wisdom says otherwise. There just need to be some improvements in how it’s delivered and marketed and priced. We continue to be quite interested in pursuing that.”
Aloha decided years ago that the lower spectrum bands are far better suited for mobile TV than the higher bands, Townsend said. Aloha examined using its 700 MHz spectrum for mobile TV, including a Las Vegas test with satellite operator SES Americom. “As I looked at alternatives I said the white spaces were perfect for mobile TV,” he said. “But I realized that the commission was very close to making a ruling that was basically going to make [the band] all unlicensed and available for low power use by anybody way who wants to use it. I was horrified… We're trying to convince the commission that unlicensed use is a bad idea. They ought to go with licensing and auctions.”
Writing to Martin prior to their meeting, Townsend argued that licensed spectrum is likely to see significantly more use than unlicensed and that a white spaces auction could bring in $10 billion to $25 billion (CD Aug 8 p9). Townsend was active in 2006 in the first AWS auction, buying spectrum as a backer of Atlantic Wireless. “We focused on the top 25 markets that for whatever reason the big guys weren’t interested in purchasing,” he said. Atlantic bought other licenses from NextWave Wireless in July, when the company spun off many of the AWS licenses it held, he said. Atlantic is exploring using the AWS spectrum to offer wireless broadband by itself or through a partnership.