FCC to Examine Spectrum on Tribal Lands at March Meeting
The FCC will make tribal issues a key focus at the March 3 meeting, Wireless Bureau Chief of Staff Matthew Nodine confirmed Monday. Other commission officials also provided updates on key initiatives before the agency, in an FCC webinar Monday aimed at the states. The FCC will look at “ways to increase spectrum coverage in the tribal areas of the United States,” Nodine said. “We do have some very interesting things that we've got coming up to figure out ways to bring high-speed Internet, high-speed broadband, high-speed 3G and 4G services to the tribal areas.”
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The FCC remains focused on wireless bill shock, Nodine said. He didn’t say when the commission will take up a final order on the issue, teed up in an October rulemaking notice. Consumers have raised the most questions about voice minutes in their plans, as well as data and text messages, he said. Nodine said the FCC has reached out to carriers and worked with them on making consumers more aware of charges when they travel internationally. “We heard from consumers that often times they are shocked by the number on the bill that they receive from their cellphone providers, whether that is overages in data, overages in minutes, consumers didn’t know how to track all this,” he said.
An update on the FCC’s push for congressional authorization to hold voluntary incentive auctions of TV broadcast spectrum was provided by Rebecca Hanson, senior advisor at the Media Bureau. A “cash infusion” from the auction could strengthen the financial position of many broadcasters even as many are poised to look for ways to use their spectrum holdings more efficiently, she said.
There are three ways that a broadcaster could take part in an incentive auction, Hanson said, “The first is the simplest, a broadcaster who feels they're in a position to contribute all of their 6 MHz channels … to their auction and in exchange they would receive a share” of the auction proceeds, she said. Some may be more willing to share a 6 MHz channel with another broadcaster and contribute part of their spectrum, she said. “In this option, the broadcaster is staying on the air,” she said. “The broadcaster has the ability to focus on that one prime channel from which he or she gains most of his or her revenue” while getting a cash infusion, Hanson said. The third option is a “proceeds” share for stations willing to move from UHF to VHF, she said. “This opportunity may be attractive from a broadcaster who, say, gets 85, 95 percent of his revenue from carriage on cable or satellite networks,” she said. “That broadcaster would continue to enjoy that revenue stream … but would be a part of the band that we believe is less attractive to wireless broadband providers.”
Details on Wednesday’s broadband acceleration conference at the FCC, which will feature remarks by Chairman Julius Genachowski, were provided by Deena Shetler, deputy chief of the Wireline Bureau’s Pricing Policy Division. The agenda hasn’t been published. The FCC will hear from industry and government panelists on cases where rights-of-way issues have been resolved in a “best practices” panel, Shetler said. A second panel will focus on intelligent transportation systems, smart grid, wireless-fiber backhaul and other “innovations,” she said. Shetler said the FCC hopes the discussions will help it identify how to resolve problems more quickly. “We recognize that this is a multi-jurisdictions problem,” she said. “We want to facilitate everyone working together. We want to get input from both sides of the debate.”