The FCC Wants to Know: How Much Spectrum Is Too Much Spectrum?

[Commentary] It’s undeniable that a small handful of carriers control an overwhelming amount of mobile spectrum in the US. Many observers of the communications landscape believe that that intense concentration has reached alarming proportions. Unfortunately, to date, federal regulators have not tended to be among those hand-wringers.

As a result, Verizon and AT&T, and to a lesser extent Sprint and T-Mobile, have increasingly gobbled up huge chunks of spectrum both through auctions and in secondary market transactions, leaving only the crumbs for smaller carriers to squabble over. Often the Federal Communications Commission auctions the spectrum in increments covering huge territories – Regional Economic Area Groupings (REAG) or Major Economic Areas (EA) – that span as many as ten states. Such vast areas are too big for a small or medium sized carrier to handle and usually more than even the largest carriers can hope to build out in a reasonable timeframe. So a considerable amount of spectrum lies moldering in the larders of the largest carriers for a rainy day while smaller carriers cannot fulfill their customers’ basic needs. Now the FCC has decided to take a fresh look at its policy on mobile spectrum holdings. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released in September (and published in the Federal Register in early October) , the FCC has opened a far-ranging and much needed inquiry into all aspects of the spectrum accumulation issue.