Auction Ahead: FCC Gets Earful Ahead of Friday’s C-band Vote

摘要

With the FCC days away from voting on chmn Ajit Pai’s C-band proposal, the agency’s getting plenty of last-minute advice on what the final order should look like. The wish list of adjustments to the draft proposal run the gamut. NCTA is asking the agency to take additional steps to ensure there’s no disruption of video services for content companies and MVPDs during the transition of the 3.7-3.98GHz band to terrestrial wireless use. The cable association recommended that a framework be created that would address the need for occasional use earth stations to continue to function as key links in the video distribution chain and that reasonable accommodations are made to enable continued delivery of video from international feeds, including news, sports, and other programming that today utilize the entire C-band. Content companies have visited FCC HQ on 12th Street in recent days to make similar pleas. “Occasional use operations are critical to coverage of major sporting events, breaking news, and other ‘onthe- spot’ events, and programmers rely on occasional use in both uplinking and downlinking content in real time,” Disney/ESPN said in an ex parte published Monday. The programmer suggested the FCC create a process for registering venues where occasional use is especially likely to be needed, such as sporting venues and convention centers. Recognizing that it would be infeasible to register all sites where secondary use may be deployed, Disney/ ESPN suggested the FCC allow occasional use services to operate on a secondary, non-protected basis in the 3.7- 4 GHz band—with those services having to accept any interference from flexible use licenses in the lower 300MHz. Another area interested parties are honing in on is adjacent 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) operations. They want assurance in the C-band order that CBRS operations are entitled to protection from interference. In a meeting Friday, Charter execs suggested the FCC require CBRS operators and C-band licensees to coordinate and to synchronize time division duplexing operations above and below the 3.7 GHz band edge. With CBRS now commercially viable for wireless, its proponents argue there’s no time to waste. “By the time C-band equipment and services are available, large CBRS innovations and deployments will already be in use,” Charter said. NAB and other content companies want to make sure that the HEVC compression standard is acknowledged in the order as appropriate choice for some programmers and that no one is forced to implement AVC compression. That means ensuring that reimbursement isn’t tied to adoption of only certain compression standards. With the proposal establishing a Dec 8 start date for C-band auction, look for things to move swiftly after Friday’s vote.