General comments from the Department of Justice, culminating in remarks by Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer Thursday (CD Jan 31 p14), sound an “ominous” note on the prospects for how regulators would view a Sprint/T-Mobile deal, Stifel Nicolaus said Friday in a research note. “We believe DOJ has been sending an increasingly ominous message about a possible Sprint/T-Mobile merger, starting with broad DOJ comments last year about preferring a wireless market with four national carriers,” Stifel said. “We believe that Sprint/T-Mobile could fight DOJ opposition in court, but their efforts could be complicated by potential resistance from the FCC -- as were AT&T/T-Mobile’s -- and this time the FCC has the added incentive of wanting to ensure the four national wireless carriers bid in upcoming spectrum auctions."

With rumors of a Sprint/T-Mobile deal continuing to swirl, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, is expected to go out of his way Thursday night to discuss the importance of DOJ blocking the earlier AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Baer’s comments came in prepared remarks he is to deliver to the New York State Bar Association. “Since AT&T terminated its effort to eliminate T-Mobile as a rival, T-Mobile has spearheaded increased competition in wireless services,” Baer said. “Shortly after the merger was abandoned, T-Mobile announced a $4 billion investment in modernizing its network and deploying 4G LTE service. It then made a series of moves to offer cheaper and better customer contracts, including offering plans without annual contracts and selling Apple’s iPhone 5 on better terms than the competition."

T-Mobile’s buy of 700 MHz A-block licenses from Verizon is only a first step as the acquirer looks to buy more low-band spectrum, said Vice President Kathleen Ham in a blog post. “We believe the acquisition of Verizon’s A-Block will provide us with a good base of low-band spectrum, but it does not eliminate our need to continue to add to our portfolio,” Ham wrote (http://bit.ly/MlYsxD). “Even though interference and other problems previously associated with the A-Block are rapidly diminishing, thanks in part to an interoperability deal brokered by the FCC with AT&T and DISH, not all of the spectrum will be immediately usable.” The buy gives T-Mobile “just 6 MHz of low-band spectrum on average nationwide -- much less than the big two,” AT&T and Verizon, she said. “Clearly, low-band spectrum will remain highly concentrated in the hands of the two largest carriers.” The buy was announced in early January (CD Jan 7 p1).

There is broad industry agreement that the FCC’s spectrum aggregation policies are “flawed,” Sprint representatives said in a meeting with FCC Wireless Bureau staff. “Most notably, the Commission’s current tool -- the ’spectrum screen’ -- for assessing the likelihood of competitive harm arising from a particular spectrum acquisition fails to accurately reflect the critical competitive differences between bands available for mobile broadband,” Sprint said (http://bit.ly/1fn8TM9). “As Sprint explained, these differences significantly affect the ability and cost of a firm to deploy and operate a network using specific frequency bands. These varying costs and feasibility of deployment between bands directly affect the ability of firms to effectively compete in response to another firm’s attempt to exercise market power -- the key inquiry of the Commission’s spectrum screen."

Verizon Communications is on track to close its purchase of Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless by Feb. 21, Verizon Communications said Tuesday after its shareholders approved the telco’s plan to issue up to 1.28 billion new shares of Verizon stock to help pay for the buyout. Verizon said it’s still waiting for the High Court of England and Wales to approve the buyout, but has received FCC clearance.

Partial Economic Area (PEA) licenses aren’t a satisfactory alternative as a license size for the upcoming incentive TV auction, said representatives of the Rural Wireless Association and NTCA in a meeting with FCC officials. PEAs “remain too large to ensure the auction participation level necessary to ensure dissemination of licenses to small businesses and rural telephone companies,” the groups told the FCC in an ex parte filing. “For many carriers, the use of PEAs would preclude auction participation in much the same way as Economic Areas. … This is particularly true for carriers west of the Mississippi River.” The two associations want the FCC to offer license in the smaller Cellular Market Area-sized licenses.

The FCC has taken a critical step in allowing the use of time division duplex (TDD) equipment within 700 MHz A block, Access Spectrum said Wednesday. “This decision confirms that TDD equipment, which uses a single frequency for both transmission and reception, can be deployed in full compliance with FCC regulations in the Upper 700 MHz A Block,” the company said in a news release. “By complying with these rules and through the careful design that has gone into its development, TDD equipment can be deployed in the A Block without causing harmful interference to devices in neighboring portions of the spectrum. These developments are crucial steps in showing that enterprises can use the A Block for productive, innovative applications through the secondary spectrum market."

The FCC should dedicate more spectrum in the 600 MHz and 5 GHz bands for unlicensed use, Wi-Fi Alliance officials said in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. In the 600 MHz band, the FCC should make four 6 MHz channels available to take advantage of legacy 20 MHz-wide Wi-Fi standards, alliance representatives said, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1b1JaY3). “The Wi-Fi Alliance noted that there has been little use of the spectrum dedicated for white spaces operation because of the uncertainty regarding the future use of the 600 MHz band."

The FCC Wireless Bureau gave Mobile Relay Associates a waiver so it can offer services in the “band edges” between Industrial/Business Pool spectrum and General Mobile Radio Service spectrum. MRA, which provides two-way radio communications, got permission to use frequency pairs 462/467.5375 and 462/467.7375 MHz in the Los Angeles, Denver, Las Vegas and Miami metropolitan areas. “Based on the record before us, we conclude that MRA has presented sufficient facts to meet the standard for grant of the requested waivers,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/LkUq8i).

Spectrum sharing rather than exclusive-use licenses must become “the new normal,” Wharton Professor Kevin Werbach says in a new white paper. “Spectrum policy should make a commitment to users of spectrum rather than merely to spectrum holders,” he said. Werbach said the nation’s orientation to spectrum needs to change (http://bit.ly/1aFmDCI). “Policy makers should acknowledge what engineers already recognize and businesses are already implementing: The future of spectrum is about various forms of sharing. Exclusive rights are still desirable, even essential, in some contexts. However, they will exist within a larger matrix of sharing arrangements to maximize available capacity."