WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission last week did some house-cleaning on the local multipoint distribution service auction by adopting partitioning and disaggregation rules that give LMDS licensees the same flexibility that other wireless licensees possess, including combining partitioning and disaggregation. Partitioning is the reassignment of licenses by geographic areas other than those used by the FCC in the original licensing process. Disaggregation is the assignment of discrete portions, or “blocks” of spectrum licenses to another qualifying entity.
Partitioning is permitted as long as the participants submit to the FCC the relevant boundaries and coordinates. Additionally, the combined parties must certify that the agreement will satisfy the substantial service requirement for the original license. Disaggregation is allowed for any amount of spectrum, with no requirement the disaggregator retain a certain amount of spectrum. In this instance, the agreement must specify which of the parties will meet the substantial service requirement or the parties may agree to share responsibility for meeting the construction requirement.
The partitionees and disaggregatees will hold their licenses for the remainder of the original licensees’ 10-year term and may earn a renewal expectancy similar to other LMDS licensees.
In other LMDS post-auction action, Amy J. Zoslov, acting chief of the Auctions and Industry Analysis Division of the FCC’s Wireless Telecom Bureau, said it would be early next year before the FCC re-auctions the 122 unclaimed licenses. Zoslov, speaking at an LMDS post-auction forum, later told reporters the minimum opening bid process is only one reason why these licenses were not sold. Louis Sigalos, chief of the auctions operations branch, earlier had said it would have been patently unfair to have lowered the opening bid on those licenses after the first three rounds.
