FCC Ready to Release 800 MHz True-Up Order
The FCC is set to release as early as Monday an order addressing the true-up payment by Sprint Nextel growing out of the FCC’s landmark 800 MHz rebanding order. FCC sources said Friday the order was largely uncontroversial and likely will not be accompanied by statements by the various commissioners. Sprint likely will not owe any money after it pays all 800 MHz transition costs, a spokesman said Friday.
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When the FCC approved the order in July 2004, it set the value of the 10 MHz national license Nextel was to receive at $4.8 billion and the value of spectrum Nextel would contribute at $2 billion. That left $2.8 billion in costs Nextel had to cover.
Other carriers had insisted that Nextel pay the full value of the spectrum. In an agreement clearing the way for a 5-0 vote, the order required that Nextel pay the full assessed cost of the spectrum through a kind of windfall charge. That amount is offset by the money Sprint has been paying to help public safety agencies reband.
Sprint has spent $1.6 billion so far through the end of the third quarter and estimates it will spend between $2.8 billion and $3.4 billion by the time rebanding is complete, a company spokesman said Friday. The original deadline for the rebanding was June 26 and Nextel was to make the true-up payment six months later. But since the process has been extended, in June Sprint requested that the true-up and other deadlines also be extended.
“Significant progress has been made reconfiguring the 800 MHz and 2 GHz bands in accordance with the Report and Order adopted by the Commission in this proceeding,” Sprint said in a June letter to the commission. “With respect to 800 MHz reconfiguration, the Commission recently granted nearly 500 public safety licensees waivers of its June 26, 2008 deadline for completing 800 MHz reconfiguration because they cannot meet this deadline… In light of these changed circumstances, the Commission should make a number of ‘housekeeping’ adjustments to its deadlines and procedures that are currently tied to the original June 26, 2008 completion date.”