The FCC Tuesday released the text of its notice of...

it should conduct the reverse auction, TV band repacking and the forward spectrum auction it plans to undertake. The notice said the FCC plans to work with the State Department and telecommunications officials in Canada and Mexico on new bilateral “instruments” to allow the flexible use of spectrum in the TV bands in border regions. “Since wireless broadband operations are not currently allowed in the UHF band, new arrangements will have to be negotiated with Canada and Mexico to allow such operations” near their borders, the notice said. The notice also asked whether and how it should weight broadcasters bids in the reverse portion of the auction because each license is not valued the same. “For example, some stations have larger coverage areas and serve greater populations than others,” it said. It also identified two ways it might handle the broadcast band’s repacking -- an integer programming algorithm or a sequential algorithm, it said, calling the latter a “simpler mathematical recipe.” The notice also proposes a “dynamic auction design format” for the forward auction, which could involve a simultaneous multiple round ascending auction or an ascending clock auction. On auction eligibility, the notice proposes to bar full power and Class A licensees with expired, cancelled or revoked licenses from participating in the reverse auction. The notice asks how it should treat pending enforcement actions against stations who bid in the reverse auction. “Winning license termination bidders should, we think, have a reasonable degree of certainty about how pending enforcement actions will be handled,” it said. The notice also asks whether it should let stations bid on accepting additional interference from other stations or to reduce their service area some. “If we were to allow licensees to participate ... by bidding to accept more interference from which they would otherwise be entitled to protection, then we might be able to accommodate more broadcast stations in the same amount of spectrum during the repacking process,” it said. One option the notice considers for repacking the broadcast band “would not ensure preservation of service to all of the specific viewers that currently can receive a station’s signal,” but would preserve the approximate number of viewers who can, the notice said. The notice asked for comment on whether it should take all reasonable efforts to preserve a station’s service “to the same specific viewers.” For the forward auction, the notice contemplates a flexible band plan to account for its reliance on the reverse auction and repacking stages of the broader plan. “We propose a structure to keep the downlink spectrum band consistent nationwide while allowing variations in the amount of uplink spectrum available in a geographic area,” it said.