FCC Establishes Incentive Program for Wireless Services

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The FCC wants to get more spectrum into the hands of Tribes, small carriers and companies serving rural areas. That’s why on Thursday, the Commissioners voted to establish a new Enhanced Competition Incentive Program (ECIP) to establish incentives for wireless licensees to make underused spectrum available to such groups. 

The ECIP encourages licensees to partition, disaggregate, or lease spectrum to better match available spectrum resources with entities that want to provide needed services to under-connected communities. The action builds upon Congressional goals in the MOBILE NOW Act to incentivize beneficial transactions in the public interest. 

Under this new program, small carriers and Tribal Nations can qualify, as can rural-focused entities. Transactions must offer at least half of the licensed spectrum from a given wireless radio service license to an unaffiliated eligible entity for long-term use within specific geographic parameters. The way it would work is any covered geographic licensee may offer spectrum to an unaffiliated eligible entity through a partition and/or disaggregation, and any covered geographic licensee eligible to lease in an included service may offer spectrum to an unaffiliated eligible entity through a long-term leasing arrangement. 

To participate in the program, parties to a license assignment or lease will demonstrate ECIP eligibility when seeking FCC approval of their transaction, consistent with existing secondary market rules and processes. If the FCC finds that approval of an ECIP eligible assignment or lease is in the public interest, the agency will consent to the transaction and confer benefits, including five-year license term extensions, one year construction extensions, and substituted alternative construction requirements for rural-focused transactions. 

Tribal Use

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said during the vote he thinks about the times he’s spent in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, along the southwest border of South Dakota and on an air force base in Montana, in “vast parts of the country where I look at my phone and there’s literally no bars.” Those are in parts of the country “where we know there’s spectrum available” and the FCC has “licensed this spectrum provider to build out.” 

Speaking of the plan, Carr said: “We can accelerate the buildout in these rural areas. This is an item that is chock full of carrots and hopefully gets us there to create incentive structure so any provider that has licensed spectrum that’s relatively viable they’re not using, we can create incentives for them to work with smaller rural tribal providers to put the spectrum to use in bridging the digital divide.”

Practical, Common-Sense Steps”

Commissioner Geoffrey Starks called the concept “practical, common-sense steps that can improve the functioning of the spectrum marketplace.” He said the agency needs to make it easier for Tribes, smaller carriers and other companies focused on rural deployment to access unused spectrum.

“The program will extend license terms and construction deadlines for eligible participants, removing regulatory barriers that can discourage efficient, win-win secondary-market spectrum transactions,” said Starks. “Rural-focused entities also would benefit from substantive construction requirements that better fit their business plans, and every licensee would have the ability to reaggregate spectrum on the back end—which should make it easier for them to parcel off spectrum to smaller providers on the front end.”

The Commission also seeks further comment on whether to expand program eligibility to allow non-common carriers serving non-rural areas to be eligible to participate in the program, and whether to adopt alternative construction requirements for wireless radio licensees generally, including a safe harbor.

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

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