FCC wants airwaves auctioned

Published 12:00 am Friday, August 7, 2015

Federal regulators on Thursday set the date and rules for a unique, complex effort to buy some broadcast airwaves and auction them to wireless companies to provide more mobile services.

The so-called broadcast incentive auction will begin March 29, about four years after Congress authorized the innovative approach in hopes of making more spectrum available for wireless Internet while generating billions of dollars in revenue for the government.

The premise is simple: lure some broadcasters to give up their valuable spectrum by offering to share some of the money the government will receive by auctioning the rights to use the airwaves to wireless providers.

But the auction is highly complicated and some of the specific procedures are controversial, with implications for the amount of airwaves available to the largest wireless companies and potential problems for interference with the over-the-air signals of broadcasters and the ability to download data on smartphones.

Reflecting that, the auction rules were approved on a partisan 3-2 vote by the Democratic-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

“The complexities of reclaiming old airwaves and repurposing them for new wireless use are big — and the small details matter,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, one of the three Democratic commissioners who approved the rules. “We cannot forget we are making history.”

A key provision will limit the ability of the dominant wireless providers — AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. — to purchase the rights to use the new airwaves in some markets, in order to promote competition.

In addition, the FCC opened the door to moving TV stations in Los Angeles and some other markets into portions of the airwaves reserved for wireless microphones and mobile download. Such a move could create interference problems for both of those uses.

The FCC’s Republicans, Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly, opposed the auction rules. The two commissioners said the rules would limit the revenues raised by the auction and that their proposals to improve the process were rejected by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the majority Democrats.

“I don’t know whether the incentive auction will be successful,” Pai said. “But I do know that the FCC is making it substantially more difficult than it needs to be to have a successful auction.”

He said setting aside spectrum in some markets for T-Mobile and other smaller wireless companies put the FCC in the position of picking winners and losers in the auction.