O'Rielly Open Minded on CBRS Order but Doubts Much Will Change Before Vote

No one should feel entitled to citizens broadband radio service licenses, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told a Schools, Health & Libraries Association conference Thursday. O’Rielly told us he sees little room for additional compromise on the order headed into the Oct. 23 commissioners' meeting, though he is open to new ideas. “I’ve been working on this for a year, I’ve talked to all the parties multiple, multiple times,” O’Rielly said in an interview: “We’ve found" a place "I’m very comfortable with.” If anyone has new ideas, O’Rielly said, he will take a look.

Census tracts were far too small for the priority access licenses to be sold in an auction, O’Rielly said. “We’ve never done a spectrum auction at county level, much less census-tract level,” he said. “You were looking at half a million licenses” with census tracts, he said. “There wasn’t going to be a real auction,” he said. “It was a fake auction.”

The draft rules aren’t a “political compromise,” O’Rielly said. “It was based on sound policy reasons and technology reasons that also addressed many parties’ interest and got us to a point that almost everyone can rally around.” No one can say for certain what will happen in an auction, O’Rielly said. He cited the TV incentive auction. Everyone thought it would be dominated by carriers and the spectrum went to different kinds of companies, he noted.

Public interest groups sent a letter to Pai Thursday protesting the revised rules, as expected (see 1810090055). Here, “you are actively taking spectrum that was licensed to allow rural providers eager to serve rural America to acquire licenses and handing that spectrum to large national wireless and cable companies,” the groups said. “Nearly every rural carrier in the record -- as well as every stakeholder other than cellular providers and cable operators -- has explained that expanding license areas to larger than census tracts places the cost of licenses out of reach.” Even counties classified as “rural” often include population centers “that attract bidders able to outspend the small community-based providers genuinely seeking to serve everyone -- and who rarely build out beyond the areas of highest population density and rate of return,” the groups said.

The public interest groups said the revised rules will lead to carriers buying licenses and sitting on the spectrum. The draft changes the license term from three years to 10, creates an expectation of renewal rather than requiring re-auction and doesn’t require any buildout until license renewal at the end of 10 years, the groups said. “Even then, it merely requires service to 50 percent of the population,” the letter said: “The Commission has often imposed this or similar ‘performance obligations,’ and they invariably produced the result we have today -- an ever-increasing rural digital divide.” More than 20 groups signed.

O’Rielly said the public interest group letter says the PALs were promised to wireless ISPs. “That’s just not true,” he said. “We don’t promise licenses to anybody.” WISPs “just assumed” since the auction was “tilted in their favor, they would win,” he said.

EBS

SHLB attendees heard how the educational broadband service is working in some areas. The FCC is exploring changes to its 2.5 GHz rules, including EBS. In May, commissioners approved 4-0 an NPRM on ways to spark interest in the band, including a possible incentive auction (see 1805100053).

Mobile Beacon offers 4G LTE service through schools and other institutions for $10 a month with uncapped use, said Executive Director Katherine Messier. “The very bad thing that could happen is the FCC could decide to abandon the educational focus of this band and commercialize it,” Messier said. “Any kind of auction is the wrong way to go.” The highest and best use of the spectrum is by educators, she said. “The broadband need of kids in schools is urgent.”

EBS “is about to become a wild ride,” said Tom Rolfes with the Nebraska Office of the Chief Information Officer. “Did I mention that the ride is uphill? The time to advocate is now.” The state has students in 244 public school districts with hundreds of thousands of users daily, he said. At home, 15-20 percent of students in the state have no wired internet, he said.

“There are no carriers that have come to serve our community,” said Luis Wong, chief technology officer with Imperial County, California. “We have to take matters into our own hands.” Affordability of broadband is also an issue there, he said. “The broadband that’s there is not affordable to our families.” There's a lot of white space spectrum and lots of schools without broadband connections, he said. Wong hopes the FCC will use the proceeding to open up more 2.5 GHz spectrum.