Appeals court ruling paves way for 600 MHz incentive auction to proceed
The Federal Communications Commission scored a significant victory in its attempt to conduct its controversial 600 MHz incentive auction, with an appeals court striking down a challenge by the National Association of Broadcasters.
In a ruling late last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the FCC in its “methodology” used as the basis for its 600 MHz incentive auction rulemaking, which was released in May 2014.
NAB last August filed a petition for review with the appeals court claiming the FCC in its 600 MHz incentive auction rulemaking changed the “methodology used to predict local television coverage areas and population served, which could result in significant loss of viewership of broadcast TV stations after the FCC ‘repacks’ TV stations into a shrunken TV band.”
“Under this new methodology, many broadcast licensees, including NAB’s members, will lose coverage area and population served during the auction’s repacking and reassignment process, or be forced to participate in the auction (and relinquish broadcast spectrum rights),” the NAB lawsuit stated.
The NAB claim also stated that the FCC did not take steps to “preserve licensees’ coverage areas in repacking and that the FCC erred in failing to ensure proper protections for broadcast translators, which are transmitters that help boost the coverage of broadcast TV programming to more rural and remote viewers.”
“NAB has engaged with the FCC throughout the incentive auction rulemaking to implement a successful auction that adheres to Congressional statute, is truly voluntary, and holds harmless the millions of viewers who are reliant on local TV,” noted NAB EVP Rick Kaplan, in a statement. “Unfortunately, the FCC order oversteps congressional mandate and is likely to cause significant harm to broadcast television. We are not looking to delay the auction. We merely hope that, if the FCC does not change course on its own, the Court will help put the auction back on the track Congress envisioned so that we can quickly achieve a balanced auction that benefits all stakeholders.”
The appeals court struck down all of NAB’s arguments in the case, stating that the FCC used sound arguments and precedent in its rulemaking. In addition, the appeals court also struck down a pair of separate challenges from Sinclair Broadcast Group that challenged a 39-month timeframe laid out by the FCC for broadcasters to relocate their spectrum usage.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in April spoke at the annual NAB convention in Las Vegas, where he laid out benefits to broadcasters that participate in the reverse auction proceedings. Wheeler noted that those broadcasters are likely set for a significant financial gain, citing the more than $41 billion in net proceeds generated from the recent AWS-3 spectrum auction.
“The auction confirmed the strong market demand for more spectrum for wireless broadband,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler again stated the auction process was a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity for television broadcasters to reap part of that financial windfall, and that participation was on a completely voluntary basis all the way up until final bids for the forward-auction part of the proceedings are concluded.
The FCC had originally looked to schedule the 600 MHz auction this year, but was forced to push off the proceedings following the NAB lawsuit and general complexity of the process.
T-Mobile US, which has been pressing the FCC to stick to its scheduled plan to begin the 600 MHz auction in early 2016, applauded the court decision.
“T-Mobile applauds the court’s decision … keeping the auction for low-band spectrum on track for 2016,” the carrier noted in a statement. “This auction is critical for smaller carriers like us to get the low-band spectrum we need to defeat the duopoly and bring the benefits of competition to consumers.”
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