AT&T

AT&T announced a major initiative to expand its ultra-fast fiber network to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas.

The fiber network will deliver AT&T U-verse with GigaPowerSM service, which can deliver broadband speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second and AT&T’s most advanced TV services, to consumers and businesses. AT&T will work with local leaders in these markets to discuss ways to bring the service to their communities.

Similar to previously announced metro area selections in Austin and Dallas and advanced discussions in Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem, communities that have suitable network facilities, and show the strongest investment cases based on anticipated demand and the most receptive policies will influence these future selections and coverage maps within selected areas.

This initiative continues AT&T’s ongoing commitment to economic development in these communities, bringing jobs, advanced technologies and infrastructure. The list of 21 candidate metropolitan areas includes: Atlanta, Augusta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Greensboro, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Oakland, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, and San Jose. With previously announced markets, AT&T now has committed to or is exploring 25 metro areas for fiber deployment.

[Commentary] The word out of the Federal Communications Commission is that we can expect a 600 MHz auction framework item in the May timeframe. This has set the auction restrictions drums beating (again).

Calls for large-carrier limitations and even strategic set asides are growing ever louder. In all the rhetoric, some fundamental facts are getting lost. So, let’s ground this debate.
Fact No. 1: It will take a lot of revenue for the incentive auction to be successful.
Fact No. 2: No one bidder can run a $30 billion table.
Fact No. 3: A set aside of any type will only exacerbate the $30 billion revenue challenge.
Fact No. 4: A low band cap will also exacerbate the $30 billion revenue challenge.
For this auction to succeed, the FCC must attract wide broadcaster participation in major markets. Period. No exceptions. And to do that, the FCC must be prepared to meet prevailing price expectations.

We are firmly convinced that scoring on any basis related to station value or revenue will undermine the very broadcaster participation that is essential to success. TV stations are selling spectrum -- not their broadcast businesses. And if broadcasters don’t show up, the question of whether the auction will raise the necessary revenue on the forward side will be moot.

When the Federal Communications Commission’s mobile spectrum holdings proceeding was initiated over a year ago, AT&T argued that the Commission’s basic spectrum aggregation test -- as originally conceived -- remained a sound approach.

The test seeks to strike a balance between regulatory certainty, by assuring licensees that spectrum accumulations within a safe harbor will be approved, and regulatory flexibility, by giving the Commission a focused tool to assess whether proposals that exceed the safe harbor screen will foreclose competition. The benefits of this balanced, consumer-focused approach have been extraordinary.

To be sure, modest steps are still needed to update the screen and restore its validity. These two steps are all that is necessary to restore the screen to its proper and intended function of addressing the potential for market foreclosure.

For one thing, the screen continues to exclude a substantial amount of spectrum that the Commission’s own reports to Congress recognize as usable for mobile wireless service and that, in fact, is being used today. Most prominently, the Commission should correct a current glaring omission by including in the screen the entire 194 MHz of BRS and EBS spectrum held almost entirely by Sprint/Clearwire, rather than the mere 55.5 MHz the Commission has included to date.

Moreover, some recent decisions have departed from longstanding precedent by no longer treating the safe harbor as “safe,” requiring divestitures even where the screen has not been exceeded.

These ad hoc departures from the Commission’s framework undermine the predictability that is critical to business planning. The Commission should make clear that its case-by-case analysis will be reserved for proposals to exceed the threshold level in any local market and that this review will be properly focused on the potential for actual foreclosure.