CBRS Auction Notice Raises Concerns Ahead of Commissioner Vote
A proposed public notice on the 3.5 GHz auction could see questions at the commissioners’ meeting Thursday. Several parties have been at the FCC asking for changes and Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks are still reviewing their votes and have questions about how the auction will work in practice, industry and FCC officials said. The most controversial aspect is that the notice would allow bidding in some cases on relatively large cellular market area (CMA) licenses.
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The proposed auction of the licensed tier of the citizens broadband radio service band is to start June 25 (see 1909040073). The draft notice proposes the FCC offer seven priority access licenses (PAL) in each county-based license area. The rules would allow bidding on a CMA basis, rather than county-by-county, in the top 172 CMAs. PAL license sizes are controversial. Rosenworcel dissented on revised rules last year (see 1810230037). The FCC didn’t comment. One FCC official noted at this point the FCC is only seeking comment.
“Our public interest coalition is concerned the NPRM represents another attempt to rig the PAL auctions in favor of the big mobile carriers and to disadvantage smaller and rural ISPs by making license areas unnecessarily large,” Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, told us. The notice “appears to reverse the compromise that the FCC adopted late last year when it redefined PALs to correspond to counties,” Calabrese said: “It does so by allowing a form of package bidding for the most valuable counties in major metro areas. Even if a [Wireless ISP], cable company or other ISP outbids a big mobile carrier for the county license, the big carrier can win that license by bidding more for an expensive aggregation of counties. This will reduce competition and build out in many small town and exurbs.”
The Wireless ISP Association is also raising concerns. “WISPA members are ready to participate in the PAL auctions,” Louis Peraertz, vice president-policy, told us. “As a result of the 2018 rule changes, fewer rural broadband providers will be able to do so. Nonetheless, we are still focused on ensuring that small rural providers will have a shot at acquiring this critical infrastructure for building their service.”
In a filing posted Monday, WISPA asked the FCC to consider changing the notice to ask about “alternative proposals the Commission should consider to encourage robust bidding in rural counties and other counties with low populations.” WISPA said it plans to be active in the proceeding, in docket 19-244. WISPA also sought more information on how the CMAs would be compared with counties. WISPA met with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai and officials from the Wireless Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics.
Charter Communications reported on a series of meetings at the FCC last week, with OEA and Wireless Bureau staff, and aides to Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. Charter is “currently testing a variety of new technologies for mobile and fixed wireless services using 3.5 GHz spectrum in several urban and rural markets across the country, including Tampa, Charlotte, Denver, Lexington, Los Angeles, and New York -- with additional sites in the pipeline,” the filing said: “With the information received from these trials, Charter will evaluate the use of this band in conjunction with its existing infrastructure to deploy licensed small cells using 4G LTE and 5G wireless access technologies to enhance its wireless products.” Charter also asked the FCC to clarify and seek comment on the CMA proposal.
AT&T sought tweaks to the rules for CMA-level bidding. The draft notice “suggests that pricing in the counties would be based on the extent of variation of demand in the various counties comprising the CMA, where if only limited variation existed, the basic increment for all counties in the CMA would be the same,” AT&T said: “The pricing algorithm might be more equitable and less prone to potential arbitrage if: (i) each block of CMA demand were treated as one block of county demand for each county in the CMA; (ii) county price increments were set based on the standard algorithm used for non-CMA counties; and, (iii) the CMA price increment was merely the sum of the individual price increments in the counties comprising the CMA.”