FCC Postpones Spectrum Auction Until 2016

An anonymous reader writes: 2014 was supposed to be the year broadcasters would be allowed to sell off their unused spectrum to mobile carriers. That got pushed back to 2015 in December, and now the Federal Communications Commission has bumped it to 2016 in the face of a lawsuit from the National Association of Broadcasters. The FCC says the legal briefs aren't even due until January 2015, and it will take them until the middle of the year to review the documents and respond in court. The delay is just fine with the NAB, but probably bad news for anyone hoping that spectrum would help to improve mobile communications in the U.S. any time soon.

Comments

I don't accept TFS's this short

[Anonymous Coward]

give me frequent contributor Bennett!

Re:I don't accept TFS's this short

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

Shut the FUCK up.

Re:I don't accept TFS's this short

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me? Are you a frequent contributor? I only listen to the opinions of frequent contributors like Bennett Haselton.

Re:I don't accept TFS's this short

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't going to promote dear Bennett today but now that you asked so nicely...

Re:I don't accept TFS's this short

[wiredlogic]

Who is this Bennett you speak of?

// ==UserScript==
// @name Bennett Remover
// @namespace blargh
// @description Remove Bennett Haselton articles from Slashdot
// @include http://slashdot.org/
// @grant none
// @require http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js
// ==/UserScript==
 
var bad_articles = $("article").has("div:contains('Bennett Haselton')");
bad_articles.remove ();

Re:I don't accept TFS's this short

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this one of those Gamergate-style threads where one basement-dwelling troll tries to make everyone believe he is really thousands of people?

Why is it a 'sale' ?

[oneiros27]

As spectrum so important, why are they sold at all? Shouldn't they be leased out, so it can be revoked if it's not being used for a given number of years, to put it in the hands of companies that aren't just going to sit on them to keep it out of the hands of their competitors, or other actions not in the public interest?

And as they mention IRS tax issues (I assume for capital gains), why aren't they at least subject to property taxes? (although, that probably just gives companies more incentive to set up shell corporations in tax havens)

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Lunix Nutcase]

I don't get your point. A spectrum auction is where the FCC sells licenses to use bands of spectrum. I don't know where you got the false notion that these companies owned the spectrum itself.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[ZipK]

I don't get your point. A spectrum auction is where the FCC sells licenses to use bands of spectrum. I don't know where you got the false notion that these companies owned the spectrum itself.

From the opening sentence: "2014 was supposed to be the year broadcasters would be allowed to sell off their unused spectrum to mobile carriers." The use of "their" suggests that "broadcasters" possess and will be allowed to sell off unused spectrum.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Gr8Apes]

It's revocable monopoly ownership. Once licensed, only violations of the license result in the purchasing entity losing license to that spectrum. For the rest, the purchasing entity owns the spectrum and can do with it what they want, within terms of the license. At least that's how I understand it. Maybe the new licenses are worded differently, but that's how the old ones effectively were written.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yes, they possess the license to exclusively use the spectrum. This sale was about broadcasters selling rights to use the unused parts of their licensed spectrum.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[mirix]

The licenses are transferable, and give the right to use the spectrum. How is that different than the spectrum itself? It's a fiction so of course it's a license and not the 'physical' aether.

The problem for me is, instead of a lease going back to the state, which then leases the spectrum to someone else... some firm profits handsomely from selling a license for a fictional monopoly on a common good. That's kinda fucked.

I absolutely understand the need for licensing, else there would be mayhem. But it could be done in a better way. I guess it's the same idea as $1M taxi medallions. Those should be leased and non-transferable too.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the auction is that private transactions of spectrum licenses are just infeasible. Otherwise people would just trade and that's it. The government has nothing to do with it except facilitating transfer and giving the spectrum to who really makes the best use of it.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[ZipK]

Which re-begs the question of why licensees should be allowed to resell the spectrum at all. As the OP asked, why shouldn't licensees return unused spectrum to the actual owners, us, and we can have our representatives, the government, re-license it and pocket the money. Why are licensees profiting in a secondary market for public resources?

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Dorianny]

With no expiration clause and the ability to resell the license than in effect the license holder owns the rights to the spectrum. Licenses should expire after 50 years, carry yearly fees and not be transferable, this way the spectrum can be re-utilized for services in the public's best interests.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine renting each nm of wavelenght at a given power for a particular geography. Where there is no bid - say the Dakotas - the price would be zero. Where there is contention, there is a bid. Perhaps some uses are 'grandfathered' like radio and TV, but there is really little reason not to have open sale on the whole damn spectrum everywhere. Keep in mind, uncontended uses would be $0 (or a use so minor in power, it doesn't extend beyond the ownership of you own land or devices).

Would people trade, speculate and have futures markets? Maybe but those are harmless to net goods. It is good when you can fix a cost or income stream and reduce uncertainty. Will someone you don't like make money? Yes, they always do. Efficiency and competition will make it harder and harder to make money at that game. Margins will go down as efficiencies go up. This is why we have, often, zero cost stock trades instead of giving a few percent to brokers (and oodles of people here bitching when fractions of those fractions of those fractions are made by middlemen... literally piddling fractions).

The key is to avoid artificial scaricity. Artificial scaricity is the key to the medical cartels (licensing) and most IP schemes including those that don't let you import medicine of differing IP.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Cyberax]

Why should we create markets just to make some leeches richer? Trading spectrum doesn't generate more of it, it doesn't force more efficient usage and it gives monopoly power to several large players.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Rockoon]

As the OP asked, why shouldn't licensees return unused spectrum to the actual owners

If the choice was to keep the license for the spectrum and pretend to need it, or magnanimously give up the license for no benefit, they would do the first not the second.

I dont understand why you willingly and intentionally refuse to understand this.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[servant]

Because we, through our rep's (the govt) have given them the right to do it as part of the license we agreed to when we first licensed the spectrum portions to them. Yes, we are changing the rules mid stream in general, but this written 'in stone' license seems to be harder to change due to the possible monetary consequences to current licensees.

Re:Why is it a 'sale' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point to trading spectrum is to put a $/nm/area that ANYBODY can bid on. We already have those "markets" but in the most perverse and inefficient way: permanent grants to large swaths (?) of spectrum to private entities. We have created artificial scarcity.

Imagine you could buy spectrum for 5 hours in NYC. It is the middle of the night and demand is low. You should be able to use that if you are the highest bidder for that economic resource. Again, I could see some provisions made for historical purposes (as well as emergency, military).

Or you want to make a phone call. You have no phone plan but do have a phone. Cost: $0.01. You could be a cellphone company instead of needing a cellphone company. You rent only the slice you need and pay some willing landlined intermediary to complete the connection. Of course that would take lots of parties and work to negotiate in advance and the tech details would not be simple. In theory, we should only be limited by how "loud" we want our EM messages to be. So long as you just need to whisper to then next landline connection, you could be far quieter than we are now.

The general concept is to maximize the utility of the spectrum. As to who gets that money, it is Uncle Sam so maybe we could run a surplus one of these years instead of endless debt. Again, the market already exists, just in the most fucked up way imaginable. Or at least, one that can't see beyond BIG DATA and traditional broadcast networks (which are inefficient because they assume what people want to see and are beaming to me right now 40 channels of HDTV and about 100 radio stations (?) - I can only focus on one of these at a time).

Spectrum auction

[wonkey_monkey]

That's okay, plenty more on eBay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/48K-...

Knock some sense, Bennett Haselton

[Anonymous Coward]

Put down your LG Optimus Bennett & stop cursing at it, lollipop is not coming to you. More important matters... This spectrum nonsense is just silly a charade of government and corporations fighting over "ownership". Like ice-thirsty burners is the dessert, I think we need to find a better way to dole out the bandwidth. I think someone algorithmically inclined like our very own Bennett Haselton would be able to offer some insight into the matter. I'm not drawing my conclusions yet. Plus, he's a frequent contributor.

Bad news for OTA folks

[speedlaw]

The "spectrum" the Govt wants to auction is "found" by "repacking" the remaining TV over the air broadcasters. Among the great idea are multiple stations using one channel (So we get two crappy streams on one frequency instead of the pretty HDTV we were promised) and other stations going back to VHF-Lo (RF channels 2-5) which don't work all that well without big antennas and have issues with interference and digital. The NAB is unhappy because the "re pack" means that many stations will lose broadcast area. If you are a cable co, or a broadband provider, OF COURSE you will want to do anything you can to cripple the "cut the cord" folks....you can't ban OTA broadcast, but you can cripple it. There is debate as to how much money the broadcasters will get in compensation, but there clearly isn't anyone looking out for the OTA viewer. I like some broadband too but this is the new titan fighting the old titan...

Re:Bad news for OTA folks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make y'all a deal. Let's take ALL, as in 100% of the OTA spectrum and license it to Wireless providers on the condition that:
1) All local OTA broadcasts they replace be available via unencrypted h.265 multicast (on ipv4 and ipv6) at the Wireless providers expense at no cost to the wireless subscriber
and
2) No data caps for using any stream or VOD. Period. (This includes HBO2Go, Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and Amazon Video.)

That will put real fear in the cable companies as Al a carte television would be available in perpetuity.

I mention unencrypted multicast, as it would be painfully wasteful for anyone who wants to watch the local news to simply call up their own personal stream when the data is no different to to the half million viewers who may see it at any one time. If a HD broadcast only needs 6Mbits, and it replaces 6Mhz channels (DOCSIS 30-52Mbits per 6Mhz channel on 128QAM) That means each Analog channel space can fit 5 1080p channels. If your local area only ever had 3 channels (eg ABC, NBC, FOX) that's a substantial bandwidth gain. Now LTE levels of data... at 2x2 MIMO you get 50Mbits per 5Mhz 128QAM channel, at 4x4 MIMO you get 100Mbps.

Yes LTE and DOCSIS3 are using 128QAM. So the bandwidth comparison is perfect. Overhead, not so much.

I don't know about most of the US, but here in Canada, you're lucky if there ever was more than 2 OTA channels. So all that VHF spectrum, may as well quit wasting it.

Re:Bad news for OTA folks

[Bite The Pillow]

Which side of your agreement are wired providers on?

Do you intend to subsidize the old folks in getting a wireless plan and converter to replace the DTV converter we just subsidized?

Come back when you have thought this through.

Re:Bad news for OTA folks

[rsmith-mac]

There is debate as to how much money the broadcasters will get in compensation, but there clearly isn't anyone looking out for the OTA viewer. I like some broadband too but this is the new titan fighting the old titan...

The problem is that both OTA TV and mobile communications are good - but not great - uses of limited wireless spectrum, so you have to weigh the pros and cons of each rather than having one or another that's an obvious better use.

OTA is a one-to-many transmission, making efficient use of the spectrum, but the transmitters and receivers are basically fixed devices. Mobile communication on the other hand is truly mobile, but it's one-to-one transmission. Neither is the ideal use case - one-to-many mobile - so you have to pick between one-to-many or mobile.

But the fact of the matter is that because TVs are fixed device wired is a perfectly viable alternative for them. Whereas a wired cell phone wouldn't be nearly as useful. So you won't find much support for OTA given the fact that most people find mobile communications more useful than OTA television.

Re:Bad news for OTA folks

[antdude]

I wonder if that means we will lose OTA TV eventually. :( OTA rocks!

Re:Bad news for OTA folks

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the govt wanted to auction a Sinclair ZX Spectrum :( Meh, I'm outta here.

It doesn't really matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T and Verizon would have just bought it all up and squatted on it so that nobody else would be able to use it and drain business away from their duopoly.

This is also a way to reduce broadcast diversity

[Chronos56]

The smaller Low power stations will likely lose their license or be forced to move to another frequency with no financial compensation. As far as the Low Power stations are concerned this auction is a very bad idea.

Its the LP stations that provide minority content.

The LP I engineer for provides Spanish and Haitian content to our communities, many LP stations around the country provide similar content.

As for cell phone users this is not that much spectrum and will make little difference.

This is just a big land grab by the big cell phone carriers, welcome to the 19th century.

ATT/Verizon bought the politicians once again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again ATT and Verizon have paid off the the right people in order to push this back and stifle competition. This is so obvious of what is happening. What do we need to do, start threatening the lives of these douched FCC fools?