FCC Releases Text of 3.5 GHz NPRM
The FCC released the text of its NPRM, approved Tuesday by divided commissioners (see 1710240050), on whether the agency should change its rules for the priority access licenses (PALs) that will make up one of the three tiers of the…
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3.5 GHz shared citizens broadband radio service band. The NPRM acknowledges wide opposition to a push by CTIA and T-Mobile for the FCC to license the PALs as larger partial economic areas (PEAs). “Many commenters oppose expanding the geographic license area of PALs from census tracts to PEAs or other larger areas,” the NPRM said. “These commenters argue that PEAs -- especially in combination with other potential changes to the PAL licensing rules -- could foreclose smaller entities from participating in the PAL auction.” The NPRM seeks comment on the proposal to license the PALs as PEAs and asks other questions, including “whether a larger license area would provide additional flexibility to facilitate the deployment of a wide variety of technologies, including 5G.” Fletcher Heald wireless lawyer Mitchell Lazarus blogged that the NPRM “is a rare exception” in that nothing has changed in industry since the FCC approved the rules in 2015. The NPRM “does not point to any changed circumstances,” he wrote. Only one thing changed -- Republicans won the White House, he said. Americans “voted for an administration whose regulatory philosophy differs sharply from that of the last administration,” Lazarus wrote. “That is all it takes for Congress or the White House to change policy, but by law, an agency must provide adequate justification for any new policy. Still, so far as we can tell from the NPRM, the only change that prompts the proposed shift in these rules is the handoff to new FCC leadership.” The FCC declined to comment.