CBA offers revenue share cash to US treasury
July 22, 2019
By Chris Forrester
July 19th saw a flurry of filings to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from various interested parties to the C-Band Alliance’s (CBA) pitch for a restructuring of 180 MHz of satellite bandwidth over the US.
Filings were made from Inmarsat, AT&T, America’s Communications Assoc., T-Mobile, Charter, the Satellite Industry Assoc., Verizon and others.
Also on July 19th, it emerged that the CBA had promised to make a significant, voluntary contribution of part of the ‘windfall’ revenues it would receive from its proposed “market-based approach” to the auction sale of spectrum.
The CBA said: “We are willing to discuss a contribution with the appropriate government authorities at the right time. Upon acceptance of the material components of our proposal, we would address the economic aspects of a contribution. As we said before, we will not let a resolvable issue get in the way of moving forward with our proposal.”
On July 19th the FCC issued – yet another – ‘Public Notice’ in regard to the C-band proposals. “Today, we seek additional comment on the recent filings by: (1) ACA Connects – America’s Communications Association (ACA Connects), the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA), Charter Communications, Inc. (Charter) (collectively, ACA Connects Coalition); (2) AT&T; and (3) the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), Google, and Microsoft.”
The FCC alerted interested parties that on July 15th various organisations (including Google, and Microsoft) “filed a study conducted by Reed Engineering, which analysed Fixed Satellite Service and fixed wireless point-to-multipoint co-channel coexistence in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band. Among other conclusions, the Reed Study suggests that exclusion zones of about 10 kilometres are sufficient to protect most Fixed Satellite Service earth stations from harmful interference caused by properly-engineered co-channel point-to-multipoint broadband systems. The propagation model used in the study relied on Fixed Satellite Service earth station characteristics that require them to point upwards towards the geostationary satellite arc. Thus, the earth stations are specifically designed to mitigate their response to signals arriving from the horizon, such as terrestrial point-to-multipoint links.28 Additionally, the study relied on the directional nature of fixed service antennas and clutter to assume reduced emissions at earth stations.”
The FCC wants comments by August 7th.
The CBA, late on July 19th, saw Peter Pitsch, Head of Advocacy and Government Relations at the CBA, say: “Clearly, the FCC is moving expeditiously to ensure there is a robust record so as to resolve this matter this Fall and keep America competitive in the race to 5G. We remain confident that the complete record will confirm that the CBA proposal best gets spectrum in the hands of wireless operators quickly, with a fully-committed schedule, while protecting valuable television services used by 120 million American households. No other proposal is able to clear significant spectrum in such a reliable and fast manner. We are incorporating the feedback we get on our proposal and are working diligently with the FCC and other stakeholders to build consensus until an order is issued.”