FCC May Not Consider C-Band Incentive Auction Viable
There’s skepticism an FCC incentive auction for the C band is viable since it likely would take longer than alternatives, said C-band panelists Thursday at a Capitol Forum event. Other options include a forward auction with the new licensees required to pay incentives to parties like satellite operators, they said. A third option is an overlay auction, but bidders would want to know how much they're paying for spectrum rights while they're bidding, said AT&T Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist. Whatever type of auction is adopted will likely be a clock auction, he said.
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Eutelsat Director-Spectrum Management and Policy Wladimir Bocquet said another limitation of an incentive auction is that it doesn't work when dealing with nonexclusive licenses, such as with the C-band operators. A classic forward auction would be the quickest and smoothest route, he said.
Hultquist said the FCC is likely working toward a January order that “identifies fairly big picture things” like license size and some auction details, while issues such as technical rules to protect against interference will take longer. He said the agency could adopt procedures in January for seeking information needed for the transition plans. Others said a January order is likely (see 1912040011). Hultquist said satellite companies should look at the 5G Spectrum Act (S-2881) introduced by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., potentially as guidance for what they might be able to get from an auction. The legislation would require at least 50 percent of auction gross proceeds go to the Treasury.
Panelists generally agreed a 2020 auction seems realistic. Bocquet said having the first 100 MHz cleared by mid-2021, and the entire transition done by mid-2023, seems doable.
There also was general agreement about the need for incentive compensation for satellite providers. Hultquist said the transition will be particularly complicated because the C-band ecosystem has satellite providers selling services to content companies that in turn provide content to earth station operators, meaning transition will involve a series of steps by various parties. He said without proper incentives, there's a risk the transition won't happen expeditiously. Added NAB Associate General Counsel Patrick McFadden, incentives are the best way to ensure active participation toward a successful outcome. Bocquet said the small satellite operators with C-band authorizations but not customers also need to be accommodated to help ensure a smooth and clear transition process.
The relative lack of competition in the fixed broadband market needs more attention, with even FCC data -- which is typically overly optimistic -- indicating 35 percent of households have only a single provider, and 11 percent have none, said Jonathan Sallet, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society senior fellow and former FCC general counsel. Benton recommended policy steps for ginning up fixed broadband competition (see 1910300005). Government-driven overbuilding is criticized as wasteful, but there may be times when public money should be used to support deployment, Sallet said. Benton plans to reissue the report in 10 months after spending the time until then getting comments and input, he said.
A panel on tech platform antitrust debated platforms' treatment of news and whether the news industry should get a temporary exemption to negotiate some compensation agreement with Google. Antitrust laws protect platforms from news publishers, which cannot collectively bargain that way, said News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern. International Center for Law and Economics research fellow Alec Stapp said such an exemption could lead to Google's axing Google News altogether, and the news industry will either figure out its business woes with business model experimentation or there could be public action such as tax breaks or subsidization. Antitrust lawyer Jonathan Kanter of Paul Weiss said antitrust is at an inflection point given the swiftly changing American economy, and an uptick is likely over the next decade of antitrust cases being litigated, providing more guidance.