Industry, NTIA Expect Smooth Process Clearing AWS-3 Incumbents After November Auction
LAS VEGAS -- Clearing federal incumbents from the AWS-3 band will be a relatively smooth process, predicted NTIA Senior Adviser Peter Tenhula during a panel at the Competitive Carriers Association meeting. With short-form applications due at the FCC Friday, industry officials told us there soon will be a better idea of how much interest there is in the AWS-3 auction, slated to get underway Nov. 13. Some at CCA and CTIA meanwhile worried that NAB’s lawsuit against the incentive auction might delay it. (See separate report above in this issue.)
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"For the most part, we've learned a lot about the need for collaboration between bidders, prospective bidders, and winning bidders, and the government agencies,” Tenhula said Monday. “We're all about [getting] … information out to bidders, large and small.” NTIA has warned federal agencies about the anti-collusion rules, so they don’t get involved in discussions with potential bidders between the short-form application deadline and the end of the auction.
The only potential hiccup could come if bidders “don’t show up, which I don’t think is going to be a problem,” Tenhula said. He also said there could be more interest than expected in the unpaired 1695-1710 MHZ band, also part of the auction. Tenhula predicted some of the transition times to move federal incumbents from the AWS-3 spectrum will be shorter than originally projected. “We've been working hard to basically, one, get the cost down, and get the times down as much as possible, and that’s happening,” he said.
T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham predicted a successful AWS-1 auction. She said the spectrum is adjacent to the existing AWS-1 band and is “globally harmonized,” so lots of handsets are ready to be used in the spectrum. Ham predicted a “healthy” turnout at the auction: “The best auctions are those where there are lots of people.”
Ham also said she expects a relatively smooth process clearing federal incumbents from the band after the auction. T-Mobile was the big winner in the AWS-1 auction and spent years clearing federal users. “We know each other now,” Ham said. “We interacted with the government a lot in the AWS band. … We know who the players are on the other side. Since we've been through it once before, it should go smoother now.”
Sprint Vice President Larry Krevor predicted the AWS-3 auction will go “smoothly,” though he indicated the carrier is unlikely to bid. “Having cleared AWS-1, there’s kind of a template now and good relationships and knowledge,” he said.
"We're really looking forward to this auction,” said Patricia Robbins, a legal adviser to the FCC Wireless Bureau.
On spectrum sharing, a big theme of the Obama administration, Tenhula said dynamic frequency selection (DFS) technologies are rapidly improving. The industry touted LTE when it was at the same stage of development as DFS is now, he noted. “Anybody talking about the technology and the faith in technology, you've got to question their motives,” he said. “Maybe they already put their bet down on other types of technology. Maybe it’s not in their best business interest to be sharing spectrum with their competitors.”
"We've all seen technology do amazing things,” Krevor responded. “You don’t know what you don’t know and technology finds ways to use spectrum more efficiently constantly.” But interference remains a concern, he said. “Coming from the Sprint-Nextel part of the world, we have a lot of familiarity with interference from things nobody anticipated at 800 MHz. We worked very hard to make that go away and fix it.” Krevor conceded there’s only limited spectrum and industry and the government will have to use it more efficiently.
There’s an “arbitrary divide” between federal and commercial spectrum and “that divide is coming down,” Ham said.
The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee “has made a huge amount of progress” on sharing, said CSMAC member Michael Calabrese, director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project. “The administration is trying to both clear spectrum, where possible, for exclusive use, and share spectrum that’s underutilized, but where the federal agencies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”