M2Z accused CTIA and its members of conducting a “relentless...

spectrum, the FCC should auction the AWS-3 band by itself, as recommended in the National Broadband Plan, M2Z said. The company has long sought the band in order to offer free and low-cost wireless broadband service supported by advertising revenue. “CTIA’s renewed call for FCC delay in issuing AWS-3 service rules is flatly inconsistent with the National Broadband Plan,” M2Z said. “NTIA, to its credit, has expeditiously conducted its analysis and concluded that the 1755-1850 MHz band is not available for commercial reallocation. … The time has now come for the FCC to similarly move with dispatch and fulfill its commitment to promptly license AWS-3 as a stand-alone spectrum band.” The commission’s focus has shifted to an examination of the 1675-1710 MHz band for pairing with AWS 3 spectrum (CD June 1 p1). Uzoma Onyeije, M2Z’s vice president of regulatory affairs, told us that CTIA had shifted its focus to the band only once 1755-1780 MHz appeared to be off-limits. “The association seems to change its position to fit new facts,” he said. “We note in our ex parte that CTIA, a week before NTIA declared that 1755 was off limits, changed its advocacy to state ‘pairing in and around 1.7 GHz band.’ It seems a very prescient comment or they had someone leaking info to CTIA which seems to go counter the FCC’s new spirit of transparency.” CTIA Vice President Chris Guttman McCabe said the filing “is another effort by M2Z to try to game the system so that there is a designer spectrum allocation for them.” The National Broadband Plan, contrary to M2Z’s arguments, discusses pairing AWS-3 spectrum with federal spectrum, not a specific band, Guttman-McCabe said. But that point is not clear in the filing and M2Z inserts bracketed information in a way that distorts the record, he said. Guttman-McCabe conceded, “We would prefer it be 1755-1780 MHz.”