Opportunity in the 600MHz Band

The Federal Communications Commission’s Incentive Auction proceeding moves forward in earnest with the filing of opening comments. The stakes are as high as the issues are complex.

Freeing up more spectrum is critical to U.S. economic growth and technological leadership. And this auction presents the FCC with the best opportunity it will have for many years to advance that goal. AT&T offered a number of recommendations for building on the FCC’s initial proposals.
The Band Plan – In principle, AT&T supports many of the concepts incorporated by the FCC into the proposed band plan, which sought to carefully coordinate blocks of uplink and downlink spectrum across different markets at varying clearing targets. After engaging in a detailed engineering analysis and consulting with vendors, AT&T believes that certain aspects of the FCC’s initial proposal raise technical concerns that could create the potential for harmful interference and risk auction participation. To accommodate these concerns, AT&T offered a modified band-plan framework that retains some of the key characteristics of the FCC proposal, but with variations that seek to address technical concerns.

The Reverse and Forward Auctions – AT&T supports the FCC’s proposal to conduct reverse and forward clock auctions. The dual clock auction framework represents an innovative approach to managing the inter-related two-sided nature of an incentive auction. But, as with the band plan, AT&T offered proposals to improve upon the framework outlined by the FCC.