Public safety officials expressed anxiety over the many questions left by the FCC decision on the 800 MHZ rebanding -- especially whether Nextel will endorse the plan. Charles Werner, deputy fire chief in Charlottesville, Va., told us Fri. public safety officials remain uneasy with a “bittersweet” victory at the FCC Thurs. “There’s no signal that we've picked up from Nextel that indicates that things are going south,” Werner said. “While on the one hand it’s better for us, we haven’t seen all the details ,and you have Verizon saying they'll pursue this all the way to the Supreme Court. We are just hoping at some point to have certainty.” Werner said he’s cautioning others against putting champagne on ice, for now. “A lot of people are celebrating, but if Nextel does indeed say ‘We just can’t do this,’ we're no better off than we were yesterday,” he said. Six public safety groups that worked with Nextel on the “consensus” said in a press release Fri. they were pleased with the FCC decision: “The FCC’s groundbreaking decision will be positively received in police stations and firehouses all across America.” But Harlan McEwen, a leader of the coalition and former police chief and FBI official, also agreed that many questions remain. McEwen told us in general he was pleased with the decision. “The fact that they made a unanimous decision is quite significant,” he said. “The financial aspects of it are obviously being examined by Nextel. Until they make some kind of a response we just don’t know what their position will be. They're central to the solution.”
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 number of former NextWave licenses sold to Cingular or retained by NextWave and already off the market dictates that the FCC must not change auction rules so that fewer licenses will be made available to designated entities (DE) in upcoming Auction 58, DE Council Tree told the FCC in a filing.
A tentative conclusion that some VoIP phone calls should fall under CALEA is circulating among the FCC commissioners in a notice of proposed rulemaking, we've learned. An FCC source confirmed the rulemaking has been on circulation several weeks. A regulatory attorney who follows VoIP issues said Fri. providers have 2 main concerns. The first concerns the logic by which FCC would make the finding and the implication for VoIP regulation in general. “Does this mean that FCC is prejudging that VoIP is a telecom service under Title 2 [of the Communications Act]? The question is how FCC is going to thread the needle.” The other concern is that many VoIP operators won’t be able to configure their systems to comply with a CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) mandate: “Some people don’t have their systems designed to accommodate CALEA,” the attorney said. “Not all companies have a mediated service. Their calls don’t go through a mediated point.” A 2nd regulatory attorney with a VoIP provider said the order could be problematic: “If the goal is to really encourage innovation and new technologies and services as it has been to date…the VoIP community should be free to progress unfettered by legacy regulations.”
Over a dissent from Comr. Copps, the FCC Thurs. eliminated the cellular cross-ownership rule for all rural markets, no matter the number of competing wireless carriers.
The FCC agreed 5-0 Thurs., after months of arguments, to adopt an 800 MHz rebanding plan, which will give Nextel much of what it wanted, including 10 MHz of spectrum in the valuable 1.9 GHz band. But Nextel may have to pay more than $3 billion, beyond the spectrum it agreed to contribute. The FCC is also requiring that Nextel sign a letter of credit for $2.5 billion to cover all public safety transition costs.
Verizon Wireless announced late Thurs. it was the winning bidder for a N.Y. spectrum license sold by NextWave. Verizon said it paid $930 million for the 10 MHz license -- the minimum, or reserve, price set for the license before the sale. The announcement ends speculation the license might sell well above the reserve price. It provides spectrum in the 1.9 GHz PCS frequency in the nation’s largest market. MetroPCS bought the two 10 MHz licenses for sale in Fla. -- in Sarasota-Bradenton, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater at the reserve prices, for a total of $43.5 million. No buyer met the reserve price in Denver, Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, and NextWave will reclaim those licenses. “We're extremely pleased with the results,” said NextWave CEO Allen Salmasi. “Adding nearly $575 million of net proceeds to the company’s balance sheet will greatly strengthen our financial position and will give us ample funds to pay our remaining creditors and complete the Chapter 11 reorganization process.”
FCC Chmn. Powell is proposing an 800 MHz rebanding plan that would require Nextel to pay for public safety retuning, but not the value of the spectrum itself, unlike an earlier proposal that had been floated, sources said Wed. The order also would require Nextel to provide an additional 2 MHz at 800 MHz as a buffer for public safety communications, a proposal made by the carrier in June.
The FCC is poised to take on 3 significant wireless items today (Thurs.), even as the Nextel rebanding order appears bound to seize the headlines at the Commission’s monthly meeting. If all goes as planned FCC will hand down orders designed to encourage wireless carriers to invest in rural communities, promote greater use of smart antennas, and promote a vibrant secondary market for spectrum.
The deadline for submitting bids in NextWave’s private auction, scheduled for Thurs., came and went Tues. without a decision from the FCC that Nextel would get the 1.9 GHz spectrum it has been seeking. That was a potentially negative development for Nextel, which had pushed for a decision prior to the deadline. The FCC last week put a Nextel order on its agenda for Thurs.’s Commission meeting.
The FCC sent a clear signal last week that it will conduct a thorough investigation of the Cingular-AT&T Wireless merger, sending both companies a 12-page letter late Thurs. raising questions that probe fine points of the merger. Observers viewed the letter as a sign that the FCC may look at the merger more closely than had been thought, rather than leaving the more careful analysis to the Dept. of Justice (DoJ).