FCC Focus for Incentive Auctions Should Be on Quality Plan, Not 2014 Goal, Says Kaplan

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC’s goal of completing an incentive auction for broadcast spectrum by 2014 could come at the expense of a more fully developed band plan, said NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan, on a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show. Kaplan and others spoke Wednesday about the challenges involved in the incentive auction process, much of which is yet to be determined. The most important thing will be getting a plan right, not getting a plan done, said Kaplan.

The engineering should be driving the process and determining the needs for guard bands rather than declaring the necessity outright, said Neil Fried, chief counsel in the House Subcommittee on Communications. Fried said he objected to the idea of “creating artificial scarcity” by eliminating chunks of available spectrum to be guard bands, as suggested in the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking (CD Oct 1 p1). A good band plan will “give engineers and innovators predictability,” because they drive how a band is used, not policymakers, said Wiltshire & Grannis lawyer Paul Margie.

Yet to be decided is the basic structure of the auction, and the FCC’s NPRM offered some possible options, potentially allowing for both full and partial exits from broadcasting, and continued input is necessary, said Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. One idea “run up the flag pole” is the voluntary broadcaster acceptance of higher levels of carrier interference, though “that might be very complex,” which may “kill the argument itself,” he said. Mark Fratrik, chief economist at BIA Kelsey, agreed with Lake that it would be an overly complicated option. Channel sharing, another broadcaster option floated in the NPRM, is very unlikely to be a successful model, said Kaplan.

The hardest thing to come will be to find the balance between the best technological band plan and what “can actually be auctioned,” said Charla Rath, Verizon vice president of wireless policy development. “We, as possible participants, will actually have a different band plan before us [at] every so-called stage of the auction, because the commission just can’t possibly know how much spectrum it has on the table,” she said. That issue is where Rath is focusing most of her attention now, she said.

Congress will be following progress closely as the FCC works to weigh the competing demands involved, said John Branscome, senior communications counsel in the Senate Commerce Committee. Lawmakers will be looking at the issues from a “fairly high level” point of view, said House Commerce Committee member Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. There will continue to be hearings and oversight, but Congress will be tracking the issue from a greater distance, he said.

There are several issues that would likely have to go unresolved in a band plan if the agency were to stick to the 2014 timeframe, Kaplan said. For instance, questions remaining about coordination with Canada and Mexico along the borders could require two separate band plans, one focused on border areas and another on non-border regions, he said: That’s something that could “sink the entire auction,” because you don’t want to “eliminate a third of the country because you haven’t worked out agreements.” Congress allowed for much leeway on completing the auction, and the breadth of issues remaining makes the FCC’s timetable “amusing,” he said.