Sprint Nextel asked the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling...
Sprint Nextel asked the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling saying it won’t owe an anti-windfall payment to the federal government as a result of the 800 MHz rebanding. When the commission approved its landmark 800 MHz rebanding order in…
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2004, it required Nextel, then an independent company, to pay the full value of the 10 MHz national spectrum license it got as part of the rebanding agreement. Other carriers pushed for the provision as a matter of fairness. The FCC set the value of the license at $4.8 billion and the value of spectrum that Nextel would contribute as part of the rebanding at $2 billion. That left $2.8 billion in costs for Nextel to cover. The FCC has repeatedly put off the day of reckoning for Sprint to tally up its rebanding costs as the process took much longer than projected. Sprint has “substantially completed reconfiguring the 800 MHz Land Mobile Radio Band in the United States,” the carrier said in a petition filed at the FCC Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bob2gw). “Over 99 percent of all non-border U.S. and U.S.-Canada border area public safety incumbents have executed Frequency Reconfiguration Agreements with Sprint to retune their systems and over 80 percent of them are operating on their new channel assignments in the reconfigured 800 MHz band.” Sprint has already spent more than $3.1 billion, the carrier said. “When added to the Commission-determined $2 billion value of the 800 MHz spectrum Sprint contributed to make 800 MHz Reconfiguration possible, Sprint’s expenses and contributions far exceed the Commission determined $4.8 billion value of the 1.9 GHz ‘G Block’ ‘replacement’ spectrum the Commission assigned to Sprint in exchange for its financial and spectrum contributions to carrying out the Reconfiguration Plan."