Two MAS Licensees Denied Waivers; Licenses Canceled

said in an order released Wednesday. Great River told the FCC it and its 28 member cooperatives planned to use the licenses to deploy smart grid technology across Minnesota and Wisconsin. But, Great River asserted, the National Institute of Standards and Technology hasn't issued standards for system and equipment manufacturers. So Great River said it should receive a waiver until Oct. 12, 2015, the bureau said. “We conclude that Great River has failed to justify an extension of time to meet the first construction requirement because Great River’s failure to meet the buildout deadline was attributable to factors wholly within its control,” the bureau said. “Great River made the business decision to develop a Smart Grid system based on equipment manufactured to meet the Smart Grid standard developed by NIST, even though NIST had not yet developed the standard.” The bureau also denied waiver requests for seven MAS licenses held by Alligator Communications and said as a result those licenses were also canceled as of Oct. 12, 2010. Alligator had argued that granting the extensions would allow continued development and implementation of Shared Use Repeater Stations “which would be a ‘more efficient use of ... MAS spectrum ... than to have to employ stop gap implementation,’” the bureau said in a second order. “Alligator’s failure to meet its construction requirement was attributable to factors within its control,” the bureau said. “Any waiver or extension of the construction requirement would not be in the public interest.” The MAS licenses were sold in a 2005 auction. The licenses, in the 900 MHz band, allow terrestrial point-to-point and point-to-multipoint fixed and limited mobile operations.