FCC 3.45 GHz Auction Moving Forward Under Rosenworcel

An order establishing rules for a 3.45-3.55 GHz auction appears to be one spectrum item moving under acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. She's reluctant to plow into other bands while acting chief, but 3.5 GHz is teed up, and timing is an issue, with an auction having to take place this year, said FCC and industry officials. The big question is whether the FCC will approve a model based on the adjacent citizens broadband radio service or a more traditional licensed model.

The FCC has time. Lawyers active in the proceeding said as long as rules are in place this summer, the auction can start in 2021, as required by the appropriations and COVID-19 aid law. Rosenworcel said Wednesday that action is coming (see 2102170049).

“There was a widespread belief” that then-Chairman Ajit Pai “was close to releasing an order on the 3.45-3.55 GHz band in January,” said Sasha Javid, BitPath chief operating officer and a former FCC auction official. “Rosenworcel will be under pressure to finalize this proceeding relatively quickly, though the large” capital expenditure “spend of bidders in the C-band auction may dampen this pressure somewhat,” he said: “To have an auction start before the end of the year, auction procedures will likely need to be adopted by August.”

“There’s nothing like a clear congressional mandate to force the creation of spectrum auction priorities,” said Cooley’s Robert McDowell. “There’s no escaping the statutory directive to start the 3.45-3.55 GHz auction this year,” he said: “With spectrum matters historically being fertile areas for bipartisan agreement, there’s no reason the commission couldn’t also launch the 2.5 GHz auction this year.”

Commissioners still must decide whether the rules will mandate a more traditional auction, like that used for the C band, or emphasize sharing, similar to CBRS.

CTIA and T-Mobile want a traditional auction. CTIA President Meredith Baker, General Counsel Tom Power and others from the association spoke with Commissioners Brendan Carr, Geoffrey Starks and Nathan Simington on 3.45 GHz and other wireless issues, said a filing posted Friday in docket 19-348. The CTIA officials urged quick action. “The C-Band auction was powerful evidence of the need for licensed, exclusive-use mid-band spectrum for 5G, and auctioning the 100 megahertz of spectrum at 3.45-3.55 GHz under a substantially similar framework is critical for the development of 5G in the U.S.,” CTIA said.

CBRS

NCTA, Federated Wireless, the Wireless ISP Association and others see CBRS as a preferable model.

“By combining the 3.45-3.55 GHz band with the CBRS spectrum and extending the priority access license and general authorized access framework, we believe it’s the most efficient and fastest way to make additional spectrum available,” Jennifer McCarthy, Federated vice president-legal advocacy, told us. “It would also provide the FCC with the flexibility to easily expand commercial operations to additional shared bands, such as 3.1-3.45 GHz, and optimize the technical rules for the entire 3 GHz band to enable the widest range of critical 5G spectrum.”

“The vast majority of commenters that addressed ... geographic license area and license block sizes, for an auction of the 3.45 to 3.55 GHz band, agreed with WISPA that the appropriate geographic license area was county and the right size license block was 10 MHz,” said Louis Peraertz, vice president-policy. “These sizes resulted in a highly successful CBRS PAL auction that resulted in winning bids in 3,220 of 3,233 counties.”

Many commenters “noted the success” of CBRS rules “in generating a large number of nontraditional auction participants in the CBRS auction,” an NCTA spokesperson emailed: Rosenworcel “has time to explore these ideas and still meet the statutory auction deadline.”

“Given the C-band auction outcome and great demand for even more traditional licensed spectrum to provide 5G services, it may be a fairly sizable lift to adopt a different approach,” said former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. The FCC could preserve a portion for a CBRS model, “but more likely, there could be agreement to allocate more of the lower 3 GHz band” at 3.35-3.45 GHz for CBRS-style rules, he said.

The issue with CBRS rules for widespread 5G deployment “is less the sharing aspect, which does complicate matters for sure, but the onerous power limits and small license areas,” said consultant Peter Rysavy: “Those make the use of the spectrum for suburban and rural deployments completely impractical, significantly undermining the ability of 5G in that band to address the digital divide.”

The C-band auction “just showed the critical need for licensed mid-band spectrum, and the 3.45 GHz band represents an important opportunity to provide building blocks for more wireless growth,” said Scott Bergmann, CTIA senior vice president-regulatory affairs. “We urge the FCC to move forward quickly with an order that adopts 5G-friendly rules.”

The likely cost of the auction is raising questions. NTIA notified the FCC, Congress and GAO in January that it will cost an estimated $13.4 billion to clear the 3.45-3.55 GHz band for 5G (see 2101150071). Experts said that could force the FCC to approve a more traditional auction.

DOD did the cost estimates for the transition plan, which lays out all the work that will go into freeing up the band, plus all the timelines, said New Street’s Blair Levin. The Pentagon assumed exclusive licensing rather than a CBRS regime, he said. “Adoption of CBRS rules would presumably require revisions to the transition plan, which then has to be resubmitted and approved by the interagency technical panel, with new cost estimates to be submitted to Congress for review, along with other administrative actions.”

The estimate was high and, unlike previous NTIA estimates, didn’t provide specifics of the systems using the band, Peraertz said. “This unexplained estimate could unfairly restrict the commission’s discretion in adopting licensing and technical rules that best serve rural areas and other communities underserved by fixed broadband."

The DOD “has done an exceptional job developing clearing costs and a timeline that make this spectrum usable in 2022 through an auction this year,” emailed Steve Sharkey, T-Mobile vice president-government affairs, engineering and technology policy. “With the band largely cleared, it’s a prime opportunity for the Commission to make available much needed, exclusively licensed, full-power mid-band spectrum to drive competition in 5G.”