WASHINGTON—As part of the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to solve the public-safety interference problem in the 800 MHz band, Sprint Nextel Corp. was given 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band. However, before the carrier can use the spectrum it must first help move the broadcast auxiliary licensees out of the band—and that is not going well, according to a report filed by Sprint Nextel Tuesday.
“While Sprint Nextel has been diligently working to implement broadcast auxiliary service relocation, only 17 of the more than 1,000 BAS licensees who must retune their operations have entered into frequency relocation agreements with Sprint Nextel. In sharp contrast, nearly 60 percent of the 800 MHz licensees that must be retuned in Phase I—including public-safety operators, commercial systems and private licensees—have already entered into definitive FRAs with Sprint Nextel to retune their operations,” said Robert Foosaner, Sprint Nextel’s senior vice president & chief regulatory officer. “Whereas 800 MHz reconfiguration is on schedule for completion within the FCC’s 36-month deadline, not even one BAS station has completed its transition to the new band plan. Thus, the facts speak for themselves: BAS licensees are far behind schedule for completing relocation by the end of the commission-mandated 31.5 month retuning period.”
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.
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.
Since the spectrum allocation is different as BAS licensees move, Sprint Nextel must pay for new BAS equipment. “Sprint Nextel has to date already expended over $72 million in pre-funding BAS replacement equipment to enable BAS manufacturers to accelerate and expand their operations to be able to provide replacement equipment for more than 1,000 stations,” said Foosaner.
The FCC mandated that the BAS relocation be completed by Sept. 7, 2007, and that Sprint Nextel file periodic status reports.
“We didn’t ask for an extension. We are fully committed to getting it done by Sept. 7, 2007,” Lawrence Krevor, Sprint Nextel’s government affairs vice president of spectrum, told RCR Wireless News Wednesday.”We had an obligation to make a report. We made clear that our commitment has not changed. There are some problems, and we have tried to lay those out.”
The 800 MHz reconfiguration process has been messy with missed deadlines being the norm, although Krevor said that concerns about the 800 MHz retuning “may have been a bit premature.” He said that only six FRAs with 800 MHz licensees are being sent to the FCC for its review.
