Open Issues for 600 MHz Auction: Paired or Unpaired, EA or CMA?

There’s been a lot of public debate about whether limits should be placed on Verizon and AT&T as the government makes plans to auction TV broadcast spectrum in the 600 MHz band. But considerably less attention has been paid to some other equally important decisions that must be made in connection with that auction.

One of the issues is how much spectrum should be made available on an unlicensed basis. Another issue that must be resolved is whether the band plan will be based on paired spectrum or whether some spectrum will be sold on an unpaired basis. Paired spectrum enables carriers to use one swath of spectrum for upstream traffic and a separate swath for downstream traffic, making it well suited for the frequency division duplexed form of the LTE standard known as FDD-LTE. But Sprint already has considerable unpaired spectrum and would probably like the opportunity to obtain more. The carrier plans to deploy an alternate form of LTE known as TD-LTE which separates upstream and downstream traffic using time division multiplexing, eliminating the need to use paired spectrum. TD-LTE is popular in other parts of the world -- including Japan, where it has been deployed by Sprint’s new owner Softbank. Perhaps the Federal Communications Commission will attempt to use different geographic areas for different portions of the spectrum swath freed up through the broadcast auction. Potentially the FCC also could opt to make a mixture of paired and unpaired spectrum available. But complicating matters is the fact that no one knows how much spectrum TV broadcasters will voluntarily relinquish. Accordingly any plan the FCC makes will need to plan for various amounts of total spectrum.

(Nov 27)