FCC Proposes County-Wide CBRS Licenses

The Federal Communications Commission will vote later in Oct on rule changes for the upcoming auction of spectrum in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. According to a draft order released Oct 2, the proposed CBRS auction rules call for licenses to be awarded by county for a period of 10 years with the option to renew. The FCC is proposing lengthening license terms in the CBRS (3.5 GHz) band, "modestly" increasing the size of those geographic licenses--the plan is to auction the licenses sometime in 2019-and allowing them to be renewed. That is according to FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, who was delegated the oversight of the item. 

That modest increase would be to county-sized licenses, rather than partial economic areas (PEAs). Cable operators, who are actively investing in research and standards-development in the band, had pushed for those county-sized geographic licenses  as a middle ground, literally, between partial economic areas (PEAs) and the smaller census tracts. While the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) was happy the FCC did not go with larger PEAs, it said "the combination of county-sized licenses – especially where they are subject to package bidding – plus long license terms and renewability will shut out a significant number of our members from using licensed CBRS spectrum to deliver affordable, reliable broadband services to under-served rural areas."