WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission Friday changed the band plan for advanced wireless services in the 2 GHz band, making additional licenses available in rural areas.
“The minor modifications we make might actually turn out to be important. We want to make sure we have maximum flexibility,” said FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy. “Is it perfect? No. You cannot have a perfect band plan with the geography of the U.S.”
The new bands will be arranged by creating one 20-megahertz block (A) of 734 licenses divided according to cellular market areas, two blocks (B and C) of 176 licenses each divided by economic areas and three (D, E and F) blocks of 12 licenses each divided by regional economic area groupings. Six of these REAGs cover the continental United States. The other six cover various states and territories. The B Block is 20 megahertz. The C, D and E Blocks are 10 megahertz. The new F Block is 20 megahertz.
“The FCC’s order is a major victory for rural carriers and their customers. The FCC listened to rural and regional carriers, and its wise decision will bring advanced wireless services to rural areas,” said Carri Bennet, counsel for the Rural Telecommunications Group.
RTG worked with T-Mobile USA Inc. to ask the FCC to reconsider the advanced wireless services, (also known as third generation) band plan it developed in 2003.
The FCC denied a request from Council Tree Communications Inc. to set aside a specific spectrum block for small businesses. The commission also said no to a Council Tree suggestion that there be three tiers of bidding credits instead of two.
In addition, Council Tree had brought forward allegations of small companies partnering with large carriers, effectively allowing large carriers to get bidding credits for which they do not qualify. The FCC said it plans to examine this issue separately, and both Democrats on the panel urged the commission to complete the examination before the agency is scheduled to auction the spectrum in June.
“It is unclear to me why the FCC allows large wireless companies to partner with designated entities. This is even more important in the AWS auction, where auction proceeds must be sufficient to cover government relocation costs. Also, the AWS auction should raise $15 billion by some estimates for the federal government at a time when our budget is under ever-increasing pressure. Do we want the nation’s largest wireless carriers partnering with DEs to get a 25-percent discount so that auction revenues to the U.S. Treasury could potentially be reduced by well over $1 billion? How is the public interest served in that outcome?” asked FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. “Allowing access to discounts by the country’s largest wireless businesses, at the expense of taxpayers, seems completely at odds with the program whose purpose is to help small telecommunications businesses get a foothold so that they can compete on a more level playing field with more-established companies.”
Receipts from the sale of AWS licenses-comprising the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands-will be earmarked primarily for the Department of Defense to move military radio systems from the 1700 MHz band to new frequencies.
In other action, the FCC said that facilities-based broadband and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol providers are subject to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
“Responding to the needs of law enforcement is of paramount importance. New technologies present challenges to executing authorized electronic surveillance,” said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. “Although I believe that new technologies and services should operate free of economic regulation, I also believe that law-enforcement agencies must have the ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance over these new technologies. We must strike a balance between fostering competitive broadband deployment with meeting the needs of the law-enforcement community.”
The commission’s CALEA ruling was a surprise. With the increase of Internet-enabled services, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency asked the FCC to rule that communications services-regardless of their FCC classification-be required to comply with CALEA and that new technologies be subject to law-enforcement review before being made publicly available. The FCC did not rule on this second request.
“The order doesn’t address what providers have to do. It just addresses who is covered,” said Julie Veach, acting chief of the competition policy division of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau.
