Cost of Clearing 1755-1850 MHz Band Needs Greater Clarity, McDowell Says
NEW ORLEANS -- FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell Tuesday said the government must do what it can to get a better estimate of the actual cost of moving federal users off the 1755-1850 MHz band. NTIA Deputy Administrator Anna Gomez conceded over the weekend that NTIA’s report on the band merely repeated numbers submitted by federal agencies like the Department of Defense on their internal estimates of how much it would cost them to move operations out of the much-coveted band (CD May 8 p3). McDowell spoke on a panel at the CTIA annual meeting.
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The NTIA report estimated it would cost $18 billion to clear the entire band. “I didn’t expect for them to have asked DOD, for instance, or other agencies, for their assumptions to arrive at those figures, but someone does need to ask and we need to get to the bottom of how those numbers were created,” McDowell told us. “I don’t think we should accept them at face value. It’s a very large price tag, which … could torpedo the chances of that spectrum being released for auction.” It will take the involvement of “senior leadership” within the White House to get federal agencies to come to the table and provide more accurate estimates, McDowell said. “They need to escalate it to the West Wing of the White House."
McDowell also said commission work on most key issues should be not slowed down by the addition of two new commissioners. (See separate report in this issue.) McDowell specifically mentioned Verizon Wireless’s proposed buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox. “We have two highly qualified commissioners with deep policy experience in this area,” he said. “I was sworn in June 1 of ‘06 and had the Adelphia merger taken care of the very next month.” Adelphia’s cable systems were bought by Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
The FCC should not dismiss the applications from various jurisdictions, including Oklahoma, to join the list of waiver recipients allowed to build out early first responder networks in the 700 MHz band without first giving them a closer look, McDowell said. Spectrum legislation enacted in February is “largely silent” on the proposed waivers, he noted. “I think we really need to avoid a one-size-fits-all solution of dismissing them -- which is the word at hand right now -- and look at them on a case-by-case basis,” McDowell said. “They're all individual cases with their own unique facts. … It make take years for the vision of a nationwide public safety network to really get built."
The NTIA report “was not a bright green light that government was going to surrender spectrum right away,” McDowell said during the panel discussion. “I think that was disappointing from really all quarters, unless you're a federal spectrum user. … I do think it takes some of the wind out of the sails of trying to get more spectrum to market.” He noted that the last major spectrum auction took place in 2008.
But Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she remains optimistic about getting more spectrum online. “Just a few years ago we weren’t even having these sets of conversations,” she said. “The older I get the more optimistic I get. … This time next year you won’t be asking the same set of questions.” Also on the Tuesday panel, John Burke, a member of the Vermont Public Service Board, questioned whether the amount of money dedicated to wireless broadband through the USF will be enough to make a dent in the needs. “The biggest challenge is going to be ‘where’s the money?,'” he said. “If I've learned anything as a regulator, it’s that if you follow the money you'll start to figure it out.”