WASHINGTON-The American Mobile Telecommunications Association has asked the Federal Communications Commission to change its rules as to when incumbents in the upper 800 MHz band can be paid for relocation costs.
“It is imperative that the FCC move promptly to reverse this decision since any correction will be meaningless after relocation arrangements consistent with the current rules have been negotiated … [AMTA] remains convinced that a critical ingredient in achieving that objective is a provision for interim, progress payments by the [economic area] licensee to fund the relocation of incumbent systems. Absent such a requirement, incumbents may have to forego rights purportedly guaranteed them under the [FCC’s] rules to the detriment of their customers and to the timely completion of the 800 MHz migration process,” AMTA said. The process to move those incumbents is under way.
Nextel Communications Inc. won 90 percent of the total licenses auctioned in the upper 800 MHz band. Incumbents and Nextel had until Dec. 3 to voluntarily negotiate relocation. Now incumbents and Nextel are in a one-year mandatory negotiation period. When that ends, incumbents will be forced to involuntarily relocate.
For the negotiations to be fair, the FCC needs to change the rules, AMTA said in its petition for reconsideration filed Jan. 19.
“As an initial matter, incumbents are largely powerless to determine whether their relocation negotiations are conducted during the voluntary vs. mandatory vs. involuntary period. With effectively a single EA licensee nationwide, it is not surprising that activity during the voluntary period was concentrated largely on larger, rather than smaller, systems and on urban, rather than rural, areas. Incumbents, like EA licensees, might have the theoretical capacity to delay relocation negotiations once initiated, but in practical terms, only EA licensees have the ability to trigger their commencement. Incumbents should not be penalized for that fact. Rather, the rules should ensure that an equilibrium is maintained as the relocation process shifts to spectrum which is of less immediate importance to an EA licensee,” AMTA said.
In its rules released Oct. 8, the FCC said Nextel could pay at the end of the relocation process, which the FCC said was consistent with its prior rulings.
Not so, says AMTA.
“The decision cited did not relate to the timing of payments from EA licensees to incumbents during the retuning process. Rather it addressed the timing among EA licensees when the relocation of an incumbent by one EA licensee would result in the availability of a channel(s) to another EA licensee, one that had not paid any of the associated relocation costs … That provision is irrelevant to the question of relocation payments to incumbents,” AMTA said.
