The House Subcommittee on Communications & Technology on Wednesday, May 24th unanimously advanced a bill to renew the Federal Communications Commission’s (“FCC”) authority to auction commercial airwaves and use the proceeds to pay for both next generation 911 and the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program. The bipartisan 50-0 vote comes after the FCC’s...… Continue Reading
On March 9, 2023, the FCC’s spectrum auction authority expired for the first time since it was initially granted in 1993. The authority enabled the FCC to auction spectrum when it received conflicting applications for a frequency in the wireless or broadcast services. Under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the FCC’s spectrum auction authority...… Continue Reading
If you have planned your summer vacation plans around the FCC’s TV Channel Sharing Webinar that was originally scheduled for July 22, we hope you can get your deposit money back. But cheer up – now you’ve got the afternoon of July 22 free and clear! That’s because the Commission has announced that the webinar … Continue Reading
Areas/pops data for auction-eligible stations released for comment. We have another sign of the impending arrival of the spectrum auction. The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) has released what it describes as the “final” version of its TVStudy software. This latest-and-greatest version – dubbed Version 1.3.2 – is the one that will be … Continue Reading
Court green lights FCC use of updated software for OET-69 calculations A seemingly small but crucial element of the FCC’s incentive auction preparations has survived a broadside attack in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As...
Latest Greenhill estimates incorporate more sophisticated procedures and analytics, results of AWS-3 auction. Let’s say that you’re a TV broadcaster (full-service or Class A), and you’ve been thinking about participating in the Incen...
FCC tries to tie down crucial elements of underlying auction design, including definitions of “clearing targets”, “spectrum impairments” While the schedule may have slipped some, the Incentive Auction is still on its way. And ev...
Last week we reported on the establishment of opposition and reply deadlines with respect to a couple dozen or so petitions seeking reconsideration of the Commission’s spectrum auction Report and Order. According to a follow-up notice in the Fede...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch …
While the NAB and Sinclair press their appeal of the Commission’s Incentive Spectrum Auction Report and Order (R&O), a number of other folks have expressed their discontent with various aspects of the R&O in petitions for reconsideration that the FCC will have to address and resolve. A list of those petitions has been published in the Federal Register. That notice sets the deadlines for oppositions and replies. Oppositions to any or all of these petitions must be filed by November 12, 2014; replies to any oppositions are due by November 21.
More than 30 separate petitions have been filed on behalf of:
You can take a look at the various petitions on ECFS – just go to the ECFS Search page and enter “12-268” in the “Proceeding Number” box and, in the “Type of Filing” box in the “Advanced Options” sections, select “Petition for Reconsideration from the drop-down menu. (Note that the list in the Federal Register does not correspond exactly to the petitions available on ECFS, but it’s reasonably close. One apparent omission: When we performed the ECFS search, it turned up a petition filed on behalf of Sprint that isn’t listed in the Federal Register notice.)
After the FCC has ruled on these petitions, interested parties will have the opportunity to seek judicial review of the FCC's reconsideration order. If (as may reasonably be expected) this leads to more appeals on the spectrum auction front, there's no telling what impact that might have on the start date of the auctions. As we reported last week, the anticipated start has already moved from 2015 to "early 2016" because of (among other things) the already-pending NAB and Sinclair appeals.
Check back here for updates.