Kaplan Seeks Post-Incentive Auction Unlicensed Spectrum ‘Sweet Spot’

Kaplan stumped for a nationwide band plan so that the incentive auction leaves a similar amount of frequencies available for wireless broadband versus TV station use in each market, not varying amounts in different areas. He said such an approach will help the agency avoid spectrum being unused after the auction of TV stations’ analog spectrum. Because of the distance which TV station frequencies would need to be separated from carriers’ spectrum, the two types of users can’t realistically use the same frequencies in different markets without causing interference to each other, Kaplan said. “Like its cousin the split plan” -- which all major commenters in docket 12-268 on the auction but Dish Network opposed -- variable band plans across the U.S. “simply doesn’t work” because of the tenets of “basic engineering,” he said.

There’s been agreement among carriers and others on some aspects of things Kaplan contends the FCC got wrong in its approach to the auction, Kaplan noted: That splitting wireless uplink and downlink operations and putting TV stations between them won’t work. “These companies, organizations and associations did not merely disagree with the policy choice -- in fact many agreed -- but they concluded after much study, that the plan would lead to massive interference between broadcast and mobile broadband operations,” he said (http://bit.ly/ZNVRMs). Dish was the only supporter of the split-band plan, “merely because Sprint didn’t” back it, Kaplan said, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, about the DBS company’s adversary on rules to protect the H block the carrier wants from interference by Dish’s coming terrestrial wireless service. Dish had no comment for this story.

There are areas of disagreement among industry stakeholders to the incentive auction, including on whether the FCC should update its software measuring TV station interference that the agency will use to repack the TV band after the auction. Kaplan said last year’s Spectrum Act that authorized the auction doesn’t allow the FCC to change its Office of Engineering and Technology Bulletin 69 tack, as was done in a public notice last month (CD Feb 6 p10). CEA, in a filing in the docket Monday, said the changes to OET-69 are consistent with the act. “The Public Notice proposes no changes to the methodology of OET-69; it merely describes and seeks public comment on updates and improvements to the tools that the Commission uses to implement that methodology,” CEA said (http://bit.ly/147K9TU). There’s no reason “to ignore lessons learned over the nine years since software was last developed to implement OET-69,” as the act didn’t “mean that the Commission must freeze time and use now-obsolete tools and data,” CEA said.

There’s no need for the agency to risk a lawsuit “that might slow the auction down” by changing the software, Kaplan said in Q-and-A. “Congress said don’t change it.” What “Congress gave you cover on, and told you to do, I think you should just do them,” he said. OET-69 “is basically a whole can of worms” about an “intrabroadcasting fight” that NAB does support changing, just not in this context, he said. Such policy calls are the “easy stuff” versus the more complex issues of licensed versus unlicensed spectrum, given some stakeholders want more while others want less available for unlicensed use, he said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment on Kaplan’s remarks, in which he also continued to seek a delay in the auction from 2014. CTIA had no immediate comment.

So much separation would be needed between carriers and stations in a variable band plan “that the new wireless license areas will need to be significantly reduced in size, rendering a large number of the new licenses worthless,” Kaplan said. The auction rulemaking notice “doesn’t even acknowledge this fundamental problem,” he said. “While NAB raised this issue in great detail in our initial comments, and Verizon and AT&T flirted with it, no one -- and I mean no one -- addressed it in their replies.” If he’s wrong “that would be a tremendous relief,” he continued. A coalition of unidentified owners of TV stations in big markets that have expressed interest in possibly selling their frequencies had addressed the issue in its reply (CD March 12 p8) (http://bit.ly/109altH), Executive Director Preston Padden told us. “To the extent that a variable band plan raises the prospect of co-channel interference between nearby wireless and broadcast operations, the Commission should address this issue on a market- or regional-basis, not by handcuffing its ability to auction the most efficient amount of spectrum nationwide,” said that filing by the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition.

The “sweet spot” on licensed vs. unlicensed that Kaplan seeks is where “everyone wins a little, everyone loses a little,” he said in the speech. That “the most logical and realistic commercial wireless band plan will maximize licensed spectrum” isn’t meant to be “a war on unlicensed spectrum,” Kaplan said. “The issue here is that, given the imperative that this auction generates a great deal of revenue to pay for itself and congressional priorities, there is little room for error. The commission must look to maximize revenue and that means not doing gymnastics to open up new wide swaths of spectrum for unlicensed use.” Of the white spaces the FCC two years ago authorized unlicensed operation in, Kaplan said the agency “should spend less time trying to increase the size of guard bands in the upcoming auction and more time protecting and cultivating the unlicensed TV white spaces use in which it and many private companies have already invested."

The FCC should take heed from problems in the 2008 auction of 700 MHz spectrum that was then about to be vacated by broadcasters in the DTV transition, and other spectrum issues, Kaplan said. “Because of poor planning and likely a lack of attention to the engineering realities associated with placing high-power television broadcast operations adjacent to commercial wireless operations, one-third of the paired spectrum in the lower 700 MHz band is lying basically fallow,” he said. Kaplan also sought to avoid another scenario like the “wrong turn” on LightSquared, where the agency changed course and set to revoke its waiver that had allowed the terrestrial-wireless network to not have to use devices capable of communicating with satellites. That led to “a wide swath of essentially unused spectrum, save for the GPS receivers that apparently have an impenetrable Star Wars-like force field around what otherwise would be billions of dollars worth of spectrum for mobile broadband,” he said. Last year’s order to Dish so it could build out its wireless network without needing to connect mobile devices to satellites “fleshed out critical issues to arrive at a more comprehensive, long-term and smarter spectrum outcome,” Kaplan said. “This auction is no different. If anything, it has many more potential pitfalls that must be avoided.”