Frontline proposal gains steam; FCC to issue 700 MHz rules in July

The Federal Communications Commission appears to have gained sufficient political cover to move forward with plan to auction a national 700 MHz license designed to serve unmet public-safety and consumer broadband needs, but the agency must still resolve a slew of critical issues before it issues final bidding and service rules next month.
Key Senate lawmakers voiced support for what would be an unprecedented-and unproven-hybrid licensing approach to dramatically upgrade public-safety communications capabilities that were lacking in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. The approach could also inject serious competition-via wireless technology-into a broadband market dominated by Bell telephone and cable TV giants.
The 700 MHz public-private approach under consideration is based on a proposal from Frontline Wireless L.L.C., a startup whose heavyweight Silicon Valley funding is complemented with aggressive advocacy by high-profile political insiders comprising the firm’s management team. Under the Frontline plan, 10 of the auction-bound 60 megahertz would be set aside for a hybrid license whose operator would have access to half of public safety’s 24 megahertz in the same 700 MHz band. First responders in turn would have access to commercial spectrum on a priority basis during major emergencies.
“Without question, the concept of a partnership between public safety and a commercial operator-as some have suggested-would represent a paradigm shift in the way traditional public-safety communications have been managed and operated,” stated Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) at yesterday’s hearing. “It raises many difficult questions that must be carefully considered and answered. But the difficulty of the task should not alter the responsibility of our regulators to meet the needs of first responders and to facilitate the development and use of cutting-edge communications technologies that will be essential to protecting the safety of current and future generations.”
A final ruling on the 700 MHz auction has been pushed back to July, with the agency unlikely to tolerate any further delay because of a statutory deadline to conduct the auction by January 2008, and the need to give prospective bidders time to prepare applications as well as line up financing.
“In my opinion,” stated Inouye, “we are well past the question of whether we should help first responders build and operate a nationwide, interoperable broadband network. Instead, it is time that we focus on what we must do to accomplish this goal as quickly as possible.”
With usable spectrum growing increasingly scarce and the 700 MHz having excellent propagation characteristics, the auction could generate more than $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury.