Will There Be Volunteers To Sell Spectrum?

For all the ballyhoo surrounding the FCC’s plans to give broadcasters the opportunity to sell some of their spectrum, there’s no indication yet that potential sellers will even bite at that chance.

“To figure out if they want to participate … broadcasters need to know what are the rules of the game,” Rick Kaplan, NAB EVP of strategic planning, said Monday. If there are, in fact, broadcasters interested in participating in the voluntary spectrum auction, which will likely take place next year, Kaplan says he does not know who they are.

Part of a panel at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Kaplan said it may turn out that broadcasters will find more value in keeping their TV spectrum than auctioning it off so the wireless industry can use it.

Broadcasters also need assurances from the FCC, which is in the process of formulating the rules for the voluntary auction, that they will retain their current coverage areas, and therefore their business, if they don’t participate, he said.

Regardless, it should be up to individual broadcasters — without pressure from the FCC — to make that decision, he said.

“It’s not the FCC’s job to convince stations to go out of business,” Kaplan said. “The FCC should make the rules [of the auction] clear and easy, but the market dictates participation.”

Fellow panelist Gary Epstein, an FCC senior adviser, said the FCC’s plan will be in keeping with Congress’s mandate that non-participating broadcasters retain their reach, although “there are some interesting challenges in making sure that we do fulfill that mandate.”

He did, however, say broadcasters’ participation “is crucial” for the auction to successfully ease the spectrum crunch, so the FCC will have to find ways to make it worthwhile for them. Making the auction user-friendly is one such means. Another, Epstein said, will likely be paying broadcasters “a high value” for spectrum, which will then be made available to wireless broadband providers that need it.

“We’ve got to pay money to do that,” he said.

Meanwhile, panelists representing industries with vested, and often competing, interests in the auction — broadcasting, cable and wireless — agreed that finding ways to reallocate the spectrum without creating problems like interference is fundamental to its success.

“We have got to get this right,” said Joan Marsh, AT&T VP-federal regulatory, adding that “wireless operators do not operate well when they operate next to broadcasters. “There is nothing easy about this.”