The Federal Communications Commission of the United States is expecting to push back to early 2016 a major auction over low-frequency airwaves.
The auction, originally slated to take place in the middle of 2015, will be postponed to the following year due to the complexity of the matter and a court challenge that is currently pending.
The FCC made the announcement on the postponement of the auction through a post written by Gary Epstein, the Incentive Auction Task Force chairman of the FCC, on the agency's official blog.
The commission is still developing the rules for the incentive auction, wherein wireless carriers will have their first chance since 2008 to acquire airwaves that are tagged as "beach-front property," or a very desirable location, among radio spectrums due to their strength and reach.
The auction is seen as the agency's most complicated project since its inception, as the FCC needs to balance several economic, political and engineering considerations. However, first and foremost, the FCC will have to convince broadcasters to give up the aforementioned airwaves.
The delay will provide the FCC with more time to convince the owners of TV stations to participate in the auction. The delay also means more time for T-Mobile's push to place bidding restrictions on AT&T and Verizon, which are much larger companies and rivals in the wireless carrier industry.
Worried about the impact of the planned auction to the quality of service of TV stations, the National Association of Broadcasters have filed a petition to the United States Court of Appeals to have the District of Columbia Circuit review certain components of the proposed auction.
The final briefs of the case have been pushed back by the court until late January next year.
The NAB, however, did not agree that the lawsuit that it filed was causing the delay in the auction.
"We look forward to a speedy resolution of our legal challenge and a successful auction that preserves access to free and local TV for every American," said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the NAB.
The FCC is planning a road show that will launch in the fall to urge owners of TV stations to participate in the proposed auction, such as by going off the air or by sharing frequencies with other stations.
All the large wireless carriers are expected to join the auction. However, so far, only AT&T has been the only company to pledge a certain amount, which is $9 billion minimum.
According to Epstein, the FCC is confident that it will win in the case filed by the NAB. However, given the current schedule and the complexity of the proposed auction, along with all the participants requiring a level of certainty before the actual process, the FCC is expecting to begin accepting applications for participants by the fall of 2015 and for the auction to begin in early 2016.
