Broadcasters, Public Interest Advocates Say FCC Must Keep TV Stations Out of Duplex Gap After Incentive Auction
Broadcasters and unlicensed advocates both opposed locating TV stations in the “duplex gap” between uplink and downlink frequencies bought by carriers. Microsoft, NAB, the Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge and multiple other parties signed a letter to the FCC Tuesday asking the agency to keep the gap a TV station-free zone. The signers of the letter hope the FCC will reverse a proposal made by staff that would change rules adopted for the auction last year.
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Putting TV stations in the gap would “foreclose the use of the duplex gap for both unlicensed users and licensed wireless microphones in important markets,” the letter said. Doing so would “significantly undercut the public interest benefits associated with the auction the Commission identified in its May 2014 Framework Order by preventing both mobile news reporting and deployment of low-band unlicensed spectrum in the places where low-band spectrum is most needed to effectively provide these services,” it said. The Radio Television Digital News Association, the Utilities Telecom Council, Consumers Union, Engine Advocacy and the Wireless ISP Association also signed the letter.
“Placing TV stations in the duplex gap is just plain bad policy that ignores clear Congressional intent,” said Michael Calabrese, director of New America’s Wireless Future Project, in a news release. “Broadcasters, newscasters, technology companies and consumer advocates all urge the Commission not to reverse the agency’s decision last year to adopt a balanced auction policy that also protects the public interest in unlicensed spectrum and in over-the-air broadcasting." Calabrese also blogged about the issue Tuesday.
“Very few things could bring together broadcasters, wireless microphone users and unlicensed spectrum advocates in such total agreement,” said PK Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “Hopefully, this will cause the commission to rethink revisiting the very carefully crafted framework the commission agreed to last year, which established the duplex gap as a national channel for [TV white spaces devices] and wireless microphone use.”
Feld said he's sympathetic to the tough job the FCC faces trying to make all the pieces of the auction fit together. “But the question we need to ask is, 'How will we judge the success of the auction?’” Feld told us. “The current proposal maximizes megahertz recovered while trying to reduce, but not eliminate, impairment. But the proposal does so at a severe cost to unlicensed spectrum and wireless microphone services that the commission and Congress previously identified as having extraordinary public interest value.”
The FCC “crafted a compromise in the incentive auction order last year that attempted to balance various interests in the best way possible,” an NAB spokesman said. “While that compromise was certainly not ideal for wireless microphone users, NAB recognized the many policy objectives the FCC was attempting to achieve.” The commission shouldn't undermine the balance by putting TV stations in the duplex gap and “jeopardizing emergency news coverage that millions of Americans rely on in times of crisis,” the spokesman said. NAB is “optimistic” the FCC majority won’t bless the change, the spokesman said.
But Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics, said getting the FCC to deny the proposed change may be an uphill fight. “The reality is that every megahertz that gets set aside for unlicensed use is a megahertz that does not generate revenue in the auction,” Entner told us. “The less spectrum we have to auction the lower the auction results, increasing the likelihood of the auction missing the extremely lofty expectations by broadcasters, thereby making it more likely that the incentive auction will fail. Even strange bedfellows cannot keep the cake and eat it, too.”
Congress required the FCC to protect the interests of carriers who will buy the auctioned licenses, said Scott Bergmann, CTIA vice president-regulatory affairs. As the FCC finalizes procedures for the auction “it should prioritize maximizing the amount of commercial licensed mobile spectrum to be made available over impacts on the availability of unlicensed spectrum,” Bergmann said. “Consistent with the plain language of the Spectrum Act, it is paramount that the FCC’s final rules provide certainty and full interference protection for the licensed operators that will be asked to bid billions of dollars to ensure the auction’s success.” A lawyer who represents wireless carriers said it's “ironic” that “all of a sudden the unlicensed advocates are looking out for the broadcasters’ ability to gather news.”