WASHINGTON—Sprint Nextel Corp. and ABC Owned TV Stations Group said late Thursday that they have come to an agreement on templates for frequency relocation agreements and a group relocation agreement that allows Sprint Nextel to begin moving the ABC stations off of the 1.9 GHz band it received as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to solve public-safety interference in the 800 MHz band.
As part of that plan the FCC gave Sprint Nextel 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band to compensate it for spectrum Sprint Nextel was relinquishing in the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands. But, before Sprint Nextel could use the 1.9 GHz band spectrum, it had to pay to move more than 1,000 broadcast auxiliary service licensees to different spectrum.
Broadcasters use BAS for their live news feeds, among other things. The FCC decided in the 1990s to move the BAS band, but the relocation did not occur at that time. Now, under the Sprint Nextel relocation program, BAS licensees will use 12 megahertz of spectrum rather than the 17 megahertz they currently use in the 1.9 GHz band. Since the spectrum allocation is different as BAS licensees move, Sprint Nextel must pay for new BAS equipment.
“We’re delighted to have reached this accord, enabling ABC-owned stations across the country to continue their critical local newsgathering and reporting, in compliance with the FCC’s spectrum relocation decisions,” said Dave Converse, ABC Owned TV Stations Group vice president & director of engineering.
The FCC mandated that the BAS relocation be completed by Sept. 7, 2007, and that Sprint Nextel file periodic status reports. In a report filed last month, Sprint Nextel gave a bleak outlook about the prospects of meeting that deadline but the company said it was still committed to the commission’s mandated timeline.
“ABC has again shown its leadership in the broadcast industry by being the first major broadcaster to reach agreement with Sprint Nextel on BAS relocation reimbursement. These agreements provide a model for other licensees to complete their own agreements according to the FCC’s requirements,” said Michael Degitz, Sprint Nextel vice president of spectrum management.
The ABC Owned TV Stations Group has stations in major media markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.
Details of the templates were not released.
The FCC in 2004 said it wanted to reconfigure the 800 MHz band, changing it from slices of various types of licenses—public safety, enhanced specialized mobile radio and private wireless—to a band with three distinct sections: public safety, cellular and non-cellular.
Sprint Nextel is paying to retune public-safety and private-wireless licensees in the 800 MHz band. As part of the deal, Sprint Nextel is giving up 700 MHz and some 800 MHz channels in return for 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band. The FCC has valued the spectrum Sprint Nextel is returning at just over $2 billion. The spectrum Sprint Nextel is receiving in the 1.9 GHz band is valued at $4.89 billion, according to the commission. Sprint Nextel must make a payment to the U.S. Treasury if the retuning costs and the Sprint Nextel spectrum credit do not equal $4.86 billion.
