All Eyes on O'Rielly as Microsoft Pushes FCC to Move on Blank-Channel Proposal
Industry observers are watching FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on an commission proposal to reserve at least one blank TV channel in every market for white spaces devices and wireless mics after the TV incentive auction and repacking. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated an NPRM in June 2015 (see 1506160043). In recent weeks, Microsoft has been at the FCC to urge the agency to move forward. NAB is countering the Microsoft arguments.
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O’Rielly has been a “Republican champion of white spaces since he was a Senate aide,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “He’s been sympathetic to this and understands it very well.” Former Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel pressed for the set-aside of white spaces for unlicensed two years ago and in the end Wheeler, eager to move forward on the auction, agreed to seek comment in the NPRM, Calabrese said. Congressional letters to the FCC on both sides of the issue are likely, industry and Hill officials said.
O’Rielly was pro-TV white spaces as a Senate aide, agreed a former FCC spectrum official: “All eyes are on O’Rielly. That’s an issue that’s always been dear to his heart.” A Hill official said things have been quiet on the blank-spaces proposal, though that could be heating up with the Microsoft push.
Now Chairman Ajit Pai dissented and O’Rielly dissented in part to the NPRM. “Simply put, secondary users should not have a superior claim over primary users for any spectrum in the TV band,” O’Rielly said at the time. “This is the TV band, after all.” The FCC didn't comment.
Microsoft President Brad Smith and others from the company met with O’Rielly and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn June 19 to present a study arguing that the blank-spaces proposal would cause virtually no interference issues for broadcasters. “Millions of Americans, including millions of students, largely in rural communities, lack broadband internet access, which is a critical component of enabling success in today’s digital society,” the company said in a filing in docket 12-268. “Microsoft’s research and community deployments have shown that white spaces technology is a very effective tool for expanding existing broadband networks into unserved or underserved communities.”
NAB fired back Wednesday in a blog post by Patrick McFadden, associate general counsel. “Microsoft is currently reminding fans why some sequels should never be made,” McFadden wrote. “The latest entry in the tech giant’s Vacant Channel franchise is yet another heist movie based on a con game that’s too clever by half.” Microsoft is telling the FCC “it is urgent” the agency set aside a vacant UHF white space channel in every market nationwide following the post-auction repack “and Microsoft maintains this reservation can be accomplished without causing harm to television stations,” he said. “That’s nonsense on its face. The proposal is either unnecessary, because there will be plenty of spectrum, or it is harmful, because there will not be enough.”
NAB has long argued that the FCC’s TV white spaces push has been a failure. “Remember white spaces?” tweeted NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan. "Of course you don't.” Microsoft didn't comment.
Advocates of the blank-channel proposal hope for support from O’Rielly despite his earlier partial dissent to the 2015 NPRM. Broadband deployment, particularly in rural areas, always has been a concern, said Wayne Brough, chief economist at FreedomWorks. “If you have some bandwidth that could get this done in a lot of rural areas it’s a great opportunity,” Brough said in an interview. “I just hope the FCC will move forward on it and finalize things.”
“This is another opportunity for O'Reilly to start establishing his own voice on policy issues. While O'Reilly has often talked about things like his commitment to unlicensed spectrum access or procedural reform, he has not done much, at least not publicly, to try to move these forward now that Pai is chair,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge. Feld recalled last year’s fight over Globalstar (see 1612090043). “O'Reilly had a chance to be a third vote and negotiate for changes,” Feld said. “But at the end of the day, he didn't seem able to close the deal. This is another policy fork that raises the same question.”
The TV white spaces offer “a tremendous opportunity, especially in rural areas where plenty of broadcast spectrum lies fallow,” said Doug Brake, telecom policy senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “But in big urban markets, there are inevitably more broadcasters and fewer white spaces.” But Brake said the blank-channel proposal has merit. “Certainly a vacant channel would give fresh confidence to white-space device manufacturers, plus help bring clarity for an accelerated repack, and at very little cost,” he said.
The push to use the TV white spaces “has been eclipsed by Wi-Fi advances” such as beam-forming and multi-user MIMO and 5G technologies such as LTE-unlicensed, said Richard Bennett, network architect. “We’ve run the experiment, white spaces failed,” he said. “It’s time to move on to more practical approaches to making the most of our spectrum.”