Broadcasters, Wireless Industry Trade Body Blows on Key Incentive Auction Software

NAB said CEA and CTIA want to maximize the amount of spectrum that will be made available through the auction at the expense of broadcasters. “It is little surprise that several of the commenters supporting OET’s use of a modified OET-69 methodology represent members of the wireless community who stand to benefit from reductions in broadcasters’ predicted coverage areas and populations served; such reductions would enable the Commission to more tightly ‘repack’ broadcast channels and appropriate a larger swath of spectrum for wireless providers, to the detriment of broadcasters and their viewers,” broadcasters said (http://bit.ly/16MMQa6). NAB said “existing OET-69 methodology is perfectly capable of performing the functions needed for the incentive auction, and OET has failed to establish otherwise."

NAB submitted maps and other data, which it said show discrepancies between testing by CTIA and NAB of the TVStudy software in three markets. “NAB’s testing has shown that TVStudy produces widely inconsistent results,” the filing said. “NAB’s experience has also been corroborated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, ... which notes that several prominent television broadcasters have expressed concerns about inconsistent and even ‘drastically different’ results between different companies and within the same company.” Moreover, NAB complained that OET has not released agency tests of the software. “The Commission’s failure to release its own studies and provide a baseline or computational examples against which to assess or validate the software is a hallmark of arbitrary and capricious agency action,” NAB said. “It is also inconsistent with the Commission’s past practice. When the Commission introduced the existing OET-69 procedures, it published extensive software results and studies for notice and comment.”

But CTIA said the updated TVStudy software “is more accurate than the previous implementing software, runs more quickly than past software and is more user-friendly than the previous version.” The revised software is more likely to lead to a successful incentive auction, CTIA said (http://bit.ly/14UL6Pt). “Not only does the new software improve upon the previous iteration, but it also contains features that will be necessary to conduct the incentive auction,” the group said. “TVStudy enables the creation and maintenance of a database of interference status using a uniform global grid, which will be necessary for the Commission to evaluate the ‘daisy chain’ effect of interference caused by a potential modification of a single station. The new software also allows for a better user experience and more robust use by all interested parties. The updated OET-69 software contains a graphical user interface based on Java, as well as an analysis engine in C. The previous software relied solely upon FORTRAN, a programming language that is much less widely used than C."

CEA took on many of NAB’s legal and technical arguments against adoption of the new software, saying its use is fully consistent with the authorities granted the FCC by last year’s Spectrum Act, which gave the commission authority to hold an incentive auction. “As CEA explained in its initial comments, the software is easier to use, more accurate, and more thorough, and it offers more functionality than prior software implementing OET-69,” the group said (http://bit.ly/Yb26df). “Its use will further the ultimate goal of the Spectrum Act to reallocate broadcast spectrum to wireless broadband and will assist the FCC in meeting the ‘all reasonable efforts’ statutory criteria for repacking broadcast stations.”

T-Mobile, a likely bidder in the incentive auction, also urged the FCC to adopt the revised software. “If the incentive auction is to succeed, the Commission and the wireless industry must understand what licenses broadcasters hold and quickly identify how those licenses might fit together under an enormous number of interference scenarios that will emerge during the auction,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/ZBhYMC). “Running twenty-year-old software that relies on an iterative, station-by-station analysis and produces results that can vary depending on the assumptions used seems highly unlikely to meet the needs of the incentive auction administration function that the Commission must assume."

Sinclair said there are many reasons to question the accuracy of the TVStudy software (http://bit.ly/17pc6Gv). “There is no reason to believe that TVStudy provides more accurate information,” the broadcaster said. “There is simply no data in the record to support a conclusion one way or the other. What is clear is that TVStudy consistently returns coverage area and population counts that are materially lower than those returned by OET-69.”