AT&T weighs in on Sprint Nextel’s 800 MHz rebanding

AT&T Inc., parent of the top mobile phone carrier, urged the Federal Communications Commission to decide whether Sprint Nextel Corp. should be fined for failing to meet a key deadline in reconfiguring the 800 MHz band to fix interference caused to public-safety radio systems.
“[T]he commission should consider whether enforcement action and monetary forfeitures against Sprint Nextel are appropriate for failure to comply with the 18-month interim benchmark,” stated AT&T in an FCC filing. “Just 7 of 15 Wave 1 Regions were completed-and not a single regional on the eastern seaboard from Maine to Virginia met the benchmark.”
The FCC’s 800 MHz rebanding decision of August 2004 required Nextel Communications Inc., before being acquired by Sprint Corp., to underwrite retuning costs and make a payment to the U.S. Treasury. Sprint Nextel is giving up 700 MHz and some 800 MHz channels in return for 10 megahertz of spectrum at 1.9 GHz valued at $4.86 billion. The 36-month rebanding process is being managed by the 800 MHz Transition Administrator, an outside team selected by the FCC.
“Whatever the merits of the original 800 MHz decision, the commission now has sufficient information to recognize that the schedule will not be met,” stated AT&T. “Sprint Nextel will almost certainly come before the commission to seek an extension of the 36-month deadline or an alteration of the terms of the 800 MHz rebanding order.”
Sprint Nextel and the public-safety community have traded barbs over who’s at fault in an admittedly complex rebanding process.
The day after AT&T’s April 19 filing, Sprint Nextel asked the FCC to streamline the 800 MHz band reconfiguration by giving it “flexibility in negotiating incumbent returning costs and protection from federal criminal liability by modifying the commission’s ‘minimum cost’ standard and anti-windfall payment obligations.”
Specifically, Sprint Nextel recommended the FCC drop the existing 180-day schedule of voluntary and mandatory negotiations and replace it with a 90-day mandatory negotiation period. The latter would be triggered when an incumbent provides retuning cost estimates and a statement of work. The cellular carrier also called for the start of a comprehensive wide-area planning process that it and public-safety representatives put on the table in February “to provide a blueprint for retuning individual public-safety communications systems and assuring continuing retuning progress.”