Verizon Wireless Thurs. called on the FCC to order Nextel to fully disclose any “post-decisional” discussions the company has held with Commission staff on calculation of the value of spectrum that Nextel must relinquish as part of the proposed swap in the 800 MHz rebanding order. Verizon charged that the change Nextel is seeking could save it paying out as much as $700 million.
Howard Buskirk
Howard Buskirk, Executive Senior Editor, joined Warren Communications News in 2004, after covering Capitol Hill for Telecommunications Reports. He has covered Washington since 1993 and was formerly executive editor at Energy Business Watch, editor at Gas Daily and managing editor at Natural Gas Week. Previous to that, he was a staff reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Greenville News. Follow Buskirk on Twitter: @hbuskirk
The FCC decision on the Cingular-AT&T Wireless merger could circulate among the 4 commissioners’ offices beyond Chmn. Powell’s as early as this week, sources said Tues. That would clear the way for a vote on an FCC order sometime in Oct., though it could get pushed back until after the election. Sources also said that wireline-wireless competition issues raised by the merger were getting late attention.
The FCC Thurs. overrode wireless industry objections and approved a rulemaking and spectrum reallocation that will start the ball rolling toward a controversial auction of H-block spectrum, most likely within the next 2 years. The order passed 5-0 despite the vociferous objections of most wireless carriers.
Competition is flourishing in the CMRS (commercial wireless) marketplace, the FCC said Thurs. in its annual CMRS competition report. In a development that was a surprise to carriers, FCC revealed that for the first time it’s doing an HHI analysis of competitiveness in individual regions, which is the analysis instrument the Justice Dept. uses.
The Tower Siting Policy Alliance, representing 2 tower companies and 3 major wireless carriers including Cingular, said in a filing at the FCC it would support a compromise offered by historic preservationists on the National Programmatic Agreement (NPA) on wireless towers, if that will lead to a successful agreement. The offer comes amidst reports the NPA may still get an FCC vote this week.
The committee that will select a transition administrator (TA) who will oversee the multiyear, multibillion dollar 800 MHz rebanding faces a Sept. 20 deadline for picking a firm or individual to run the process. Public safety sources said Tues. they're growing increasingly anxious about the time it will take them to reband and about the approaching deadlines. Nextel has yet to indicate whether it will agree to the terms of the order. “Most people don’t realize how quickly that committee is supposed to choose someone to oversee the rebanding,” said a carrier source. “It’s a tall order.”
Wireless carriers are meeting with all 5 FCC comrs. or their staff in an effort to delay consideration of a proposed H-block auction. They're getting together before Thurs. evening, when the item is expected to be placed on the sunshine agenda, cutting off further lobbying. But carriers say the odds are the FCC will schedule a vote as planned at the Sept. 9 meeting.
Motorola and the National Public Safety Telecom Council (NPSTC) clashed at the FCC last week over deployment of 4.9 GHz spectrum and the “mask” needed to minimize interference, as some public safety groups move toward deployment of this newly created band. Sources said once that critical issue is resolved they expect an FCC decision within 2 months.
Wireless carrier sources said Fri. concerns they expressed before a vote -- on when outage reports must be made and other issues -- weren’t addressed by the FCC, based on the order published by the Commission late Thurs. Carriers have a meeting planned this week to discuss the order and future strategy. Senior carrier sources said a petition for reconsideration is likely. “It’s clearly not what we were asking for,” one source said. The source said the biggest concerns focused on 2 issues. First, wireless carriers are raising red flags about the short deadline for reporting an outage -- within 2 hours a carrier learns of it. Second, wireless carriers believe the standard for a reportable event -- an outage on an MSC of at least 30 min. duration that meets or exceeds 900,000 “user-minutes” -- is not realistic. “It may be good in a wireline context,” the source said: “It’s not a very good metric for wireless where… no one unit is ever assigned to one switch.” FCC said in the order that wireless switching is similar enough to wireline to justify the same standard. “The circuit switch part of a MSC is very similar if not identical to a wireline switch, and the MSC’s traffic management function is based on the same statistical methods,” FCC said. “Thus, the switch capacity of an MSC is a stable element on which to calculate the number of users potentially affected by an outage.”
Nextel has begun to reach out to public safety to shed some light on its concerns about the 800 MHz rebanding order, released by the FCC Aug. 6. Nextel held a conference call last week with public safety officials, at which it made clear it has real reservations about the order as released. Sources told us Fri. that Nextel indicated some of the issues could be deal breakers, though public safety sources said they remain hopeful all can be addressed.