NAB, AT&T and Verizon Chide FCC for ‘Disconnect’ in 600 MHz Plan

The FCC’s proposed plan for the 600 MHz band shows a “disconnect” between the commission and the wireless and broadcast industries, said AT&T, Verizon and NAB in a joint blog post featured on all three entities’ websites Tuesday (http://bit.ly/191hcK7). Echoing comments by Commissioner Ajit Pai on Friday’s public notice requesting comment on the band plan (CD May 20 p4), the three said the FCC proposals of a reversed “down from 51 plan” and a time division duplex (TDD) plan fly in the face of “hundreds of pages of comments” and two industry consensus letters. “The first has absolutely no support in the record and the second adopts a technological approach contrary to the one proposed by the majority of U.S. carriers,” they said. An FCC official responded that the PN was intended to “expand the record” on the ways “various band plans can deal with market variation so that we avoid a ‘least common denominator’ effect that could limit overall spectrum recovery and revenue generation."

By proposing a plan so different from what had previously been discussed, the Wireless Bureau has made it more difficult to hold the auction, said Verizon, AT&T and NAB. “This notice will consume resources better spent on dealing with other critical and as-yet-unanswered questions in this proceeding, such as how co-channel interference concerns could undermine the variability of any band plan and how the FCC plans to conduct an effective re-packing.”

NAB’s auction pointman, hopeful the agency will change tack from the PN, told us he worries that it put economists’ concerns ahead of engineering realities in sticking with a tack similar to the auction NPRM. “What you see is the FCC committed to its original proposals based on really neat and elegant proposals to non-real world” technical issues, said NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan. “I'm not sure you can have different amounts of spectrum in adjacent markets.” He said part of the public notice on page two worries him: “Under the policy framework set forth by the Commission, the Down from 51 approaches in the record appear to favor certainty of the operating environment over the utility of providing the maximum amount of spectrum through flexibility to offer a greater quantity of spectrum in geographic areas where more spectrum is available” (http://bit.ly/18g4fun).

Kaplan said he fears the PN’s approach will lead to problems seeing TV broadcasts for viewers and dropped calls or not getting data for wireless broadband users. Why would AT&T, Verizon Wireless and other carriers not favor the best spectrum approach, Kaplan said of the down from 51 proponents allied with NAB on that issue. “Anyone who cares about seeing the incentive auction be a success needs to start with the attitude of ‘let’s start narrowing down the issues,'” which can be done here by taking a cue from industries “normally at odds” that are aligned on a channel plan, he said. The likes of AT&T, Google, Intel, Qualcomm and Verizon “are working really hard to narrow the range of issues down, and that’s going to create certainty, but if you throw out a PN with new ideas, that’s going to create uncertainty, that’s going to create delay,” said Kaplan. The PN “goes against what everyone seems to be coalescing around,” after “we worked very hard to get the commission something on a silver platter,” he said. “They should take it and run with it."

"Everyone thought the auction was moving along in a constructive direction, and then this drops with no notice,” said a telecom industry official of the PN. He said none of the companies that had previously filed comments on the 600 MHz band plan were notified ahead of time that the notice was coming, or what it contained. The blog post also references an FCC-conducted workshop on the 600 MHz band plan held last month (CD April 5 p11). The sort of plans proposed in the PN weren’t mentioned at the workshop at all, where no indication of an upcoming plan announcement was made, said an executive at a telecom-equipment vendor.

Verizon, NAB and AT&T said the plans proposed by the FCC have little support in the record. But one company, Sprint Nextel, had filed an endorsement of a TDD plan. Sprint said that TDD uses spectrum more efficiently than other plans, and one telecom company official said such efficiency is important because of the uncertainty about the results of the auction. Another wireless company official said the plans proposed by the FCC would be more effective if less spectrum than expected is gleaned from the auction. An FCC official responded that because the band plan could be around for decades, “FCC staff has been examining a wide range of options, including the many band plans already in the record, with an eye to understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each one.” Verizon, NAB and AT&T believe the FCC is going for flexibility, the blog post said. “A fair reading of the Public Notice suggests that the FCC feels the consensus approach constrains its ability to adjust the band plan to meet market-by-market variations."

All three will be filing comments opposing the FCC’s proposed band plans, the blog post said. “Each of us of course will respond to the notice, but we don’t anticipate any fundamental shift in positions we've already taken in the record.”