As the Federal Communications Commission establishes the rules for its upcoming incentive spectrum auction, competitive carriers say they do not want to see a repeat of what happened with the 700MHz spectrum auction in 2008.
(Credit: FCC)
"The 700MHz auction was a disaster," Patrick Riordan, CEO of the rural Wisconsin carrier Cellcom, said at the Competitive Carrier Association's annual conference this week. "The FCC needs to get this one right. We all need spectrum too much. It has to be a level playing field."
On Friday the FCC will open comment on a proposal for how the agency will conduct the incentive wireless auctions, which Congress authorized in the Jobs Act passed earlier this year. In that piece of legislation, Congress gave the FCC authority to reclaim and auction spectrum held by TV broadcasters to wireless broadband operators. The auction is expected to raise billions of dollars in revenue, which will be used to help pay for a new wireless broadband public safety network as well as help reduce the deficit.
Details of the proposal have not yet been made public, but smaller competitors who fear that AT&T and Verizon Wireless have already gotten too large and have too much control over the market, say they would like to see the FCC design an auction that will provide access to the new spectrum to all wireless operators.
Learning from the past
They say it's important for the agency to lear... [Read more]
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