Articles Posted in Spectrum

Today, the FCC posted to the Auction 1001 website the Reverse Auction Initial Commitment User Guide and Online Tutorial.  Broadcasters that submitted an FCC Form 177 to participate in the Reverse Auction should review these materials to gain a better understanding of how the system will work so that they are prepared to participate when the Initial Commitment Window opens.  The Tutorial is easy to use, and you can pause it as needed to study and better understand the materials.  The User Guide is largely duplicative, but does contain important information such as technical requirements for using the system and contact information for help troubleshooting problems.

A few informational highlights include:

Important Dates:

• March 28, 2016 10am ET – March 29, 2016 6pm ET: The Initial Commitment Window – a total of 32 hours – during which broadcasters must file their Initial Commitments. The Initial Commitment may be changed until the close of the window, but if no commitment is made by the close of the window, the station will be excluded from the auction and repacked in its pre-auction band.
• March 24, 2016 10am ET – March 28, 2016 9:59am ET: The Initial Commitment Preview Period – a four-day period during which all participating stations are encouraged to log into the system, set their PINs, and view the list of stations and Relinquishment Options available to them.

What to Do in the Preview Period:  During the Preview Period, broadcasters should log in to the system and familiarize themselves with it. You will understand why this is important as you read through the paragraph below.

To log in to the system for the first time, each authorized bidder must activate their FCC-supplied RSA token (which displays a code randomly generated every 60 seconds) and select a PIN. To do so, select the “Click here for the login screen” link, enter the FCC-assigned Username for the authorized bidder logging in, the password associated with the FRN listed on the licensee’s Form 177, and the current code displayed on the FCC-supplied RSA token.  Click the Log In button.  Next, choose a 4-8 digit PIN, enter it twice in the fields provided, and click the Continue button.  There is a limited time to complete this step, with the remaining time shown on the screen.  On the next screen, type in the PIN you selected and the code shown on the RSA token.  This code cannot be the same as the one used on the prior screen.  If that code is still showing (because you have proceeded through these steps in less than 60 seconds), wait for the next code to appear.  Click the Continue button.

Once these steps are completed, each authorized bidder will log in by entering the bidder’s FCC-assigned Username, the password associated with the licensee’s FRN, the PIN selected in the step above, and the current code shown on the RSA token assigned to that bidder. Multiple bidders for a licensee can be logged into the system at the same time, but only one will be able to place bids at a time.

Overview of the System:  Once logged in, the broadcaster will see three options displayed on a navigation bar to the left of the screen: Make Commitment, Messages, and Station Info.  In addition, clocks showing the current date and time as well as the countdown to the opening of the Initial Commitment Window are displayed.

Make Commitment:  When clicking on this tab, the broadcaster will see its station or stations, if they have been deemed eligible to participate.  The Preferred Relinquishment option the broadcaster selected in its Form 177 (and the associated opening bid) will appear in a column to the right of the call sign.  To choose this Relinquishment Option as the station’s Initial Commitment, the broadcaster need only click the “Submit” button and will then see a green checkmark appear.  If the station has additional options available to it based on its frequency band and the selections the station made in its Form 177, these are available from a dropdown menu under the Preferred Relinquishment option.  As noted above, the FCC indicates that the choice the station makes from among these options can be changed until the end of the Initial Commitment Window.  Stations that no longer wish to participate in the auction will select the “Decline Commitments” option from the dropdown menu.

If the broadcaster chooses either the Move to a High VHF channel or Move to a Low VHF channel option as its Preferred Relinquishment choice, a window will open advising that the system will attempt to fulfill this choice, but that because of limited channels in the VHF band, this option is not guaranteed. These stations will be given fallback options, if available to them based on their Form 177 choices, and the option to decline fallback options.  It is important to understand the impact of selecting a VHF band option.  If the choice can be accommodated, it will be.  If the option cannot be accommodated, the station will be eliminated from the auction and repacked in its current band, unless one or more fallback options has been selected.

Messages:  In this section, FCC staff can communicate with the licensee and the licensee can communicate with FCC staff.  All authorized bidders for a station can see messages sent by that station’s other authorized bidders as long as they are logged into the system.

Station Info: This section lists all of the licensee’s stations that are eligible to participate in the auction, along with the Relinquishment Option(s) available to each station based on its frequency band and the station’s selections in its Form 177.  This is the only section that the broadcaster can see during the Preview Period.

The FCC has also announced an Initial Commitment Window Workshop to take place on March 11, 2016 from 10am – 1pm ET.  Participants can attend in person or watch online remotely, and the FCC’s staff highly recommends those interested in participating in the reverse auction also participate in the Workshop.  The FCC has said that additional tutorials and resources for participation in the next stages of the auction will be made available to licensees at a later date.  Those, however, will only be useful to broadcasters that successfully make their Initial Commitment, so time to open the Tutorial and start studying.

The FCC today released a Public Notice with instructions for filing Form 177, the application for licensees of full-power and Class A TV stations to participate in the reverse auction. As a reminder, the FCC recently extended the application filing deadline, so the filing window now begins at noon Eastern Time on December 8, 2015 and runs until 6 p.m. Eastern Time on January 12, 2016. The auction itself, however, is still on track to begin March 29, 2016.

To access Form 177, applicants must use their FRN and associated password to log into the Auction System, accessible at http://auctions.fcc.gov/ (primary location) or http://auctions2.fcc.gov/ (secondary location).  As detailed in Attachment 1 to the Public Notice, the Form requires applicants to (i) provide, among other things, basic information about their legal classification, contact information, and authorized bidders; (ii) identify one or more relinquishment options for each station; (iii) disclose information about their ownership structure; and (iv) make certain certifications.

If an applicant has entered into an executed channel sharing agreement as a sharee for the station(s) at issue, the applicant must upload at least two channel sharing attachments before submitting the application: (i) a channel sharer certification, and (ii) an unredacted copy of the executed channel sharing agreement. A Channel Sharer Certification for full-power station sharers is attached to the Public Notice as Attachment 2, and one for Class A station sharers is included as Attachment 3.

The Auction System will display both “error” and “warning” messages for each section of the Form prior to allowing an applicant to file. While the Form cannot be submitted with an uncorrected error message, the Auction System will allow applicants to proceed to the Certify & Submit screen even if the application has a warning message. The FCC cautions that applicants should not rely on their ability to certify and submit an application with a warning message as evidence that the FCC has approved the submission, and reminds applicants that the automated check may not catch all errors.

The FCC will allow you to make as many changes as you’d like to an application during the filing window, and will not consider information in your application until you click the CERTIFY & SUBMIT button.  You can even withdraw a previously submitted application up until the close of the filing window.  So while you should strive to get it right the first time, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again (until 6 p.m. Eastern Time January 12)!  And, if 22 pages of instructions aren’t helpful enough, you may want to check out the FCC’s reverse auction tutorial regarding the pre-auction process, which will be available online tomorrow, November 20, 2015 on the Auction 1001 website.

Today, the FCC released a Public Notice with a 45-page Appendix listing all full-power and Class A television stations eligible to participate in the reverse auction and receive protection in the repacking process. Licensees should immediately review the Appendix to ensure their station has been included and to determine whether the appropriate authorization for their facility has been listed for auction participation and protection in the repacking. Any station that believes it has been wrongly omitted from the Appendix must file a Petition for Eligible Entity Status by July 9, 2015.

In addition, the Public Notice announces that Form 2100, Schedule 381, the Pre-Auction Technical Certification Form, must also be filed by July 9, 2015. This form requires that the licensee review the station’s authorization listed in the Appendix, as well as the underlying technical information contained in the FCC’s database, and certify whether that information is correct. If it is not, the licensee must state in the form whether the discrepancy is the result of a Commission error or of the licensee operating at variance from its authorization.

If the discrepancy is due to an error by the FCC in its records, the corrected facilities will be used by the Commission for participation in the reverse auction and protection in the repacking process. Where the discrepancy is due to the licensee operating at variance, the licensee must file the appropriate applications to correct that information in the FCC’s database.  Those corrected parameters will not, however, be used for participation in the reverse auction or protection in the repacking process.

As we have written previously, Schedule 381 requests a great deal of information, such as the year of the last structural analysis of the station’s antenna structure and the standard under which that analysis was conducted; whether the station’s antenna is shared with another station; the antenna’s frequency range if it is capable of operating over multiple channels; and the make, model number and maximum power output capacity of the station’s transmitter.

The Public Notice states that if a licensee does not file a Schedule 381, the FCC will assume that the information in the station’s authorization and in the FCC’s database is correct. However, in that circumstance, the Commission will not have the same information regarding that station as it has for stations that did file the Schedule 381, so it is unclear at this time how the FCC will handle that situation.

The FCC will ultimately release a detailed summary of the baseline coverage and population served by each station eligible for participation in the auction and protection in the repacking process. That summary will reflect the information submitted in the Schedule 381, including corrections of discrepancies resulting from FCC errors, along with any changes made as a result of successful Petitions for Eligible Entity Status.

With today’s Public Notice, the FCC moves the spectrum auction a significant step closer to reality.

While the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, the path to any government objective is usually paved with forms and paperwork. We were reminded of that today when the FCC released a Public Notice reminding full power and Class A television stations of the May 29 Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline. Only those facilities that a station has constructed and for which a license application has been filed by May 29 will be recognized by the FCC for purposes of the reverse auction and spectrum repacking process. That is, stations will not be able to benefit in the reverse auction from, or claim protection in the repacking process for, any facilities modifications completed after May 29, despite the current September 1, 2015 deadline for transitioning Class A stations to digital operation. We wrote about this deadline back in January.

More importantly, the Public Notice further fleshes out the pre-auction process, announcing that the FCC will release a list, expected in mid-June, of each station’s eligible facilities as reflected in the FCC’s database on May 29. Every full power TV and Class A station will then be required to certify to the FCC that the information for that station in the FCC’s database is correct, or identify any errors.

If the error in the database is the FCC’s mistake, it will be corrected in the database and the corrected facilities protected in the auction and repack.  Where the discrepancy is due to the licensee’s error, the licensee must file a modification application to correct the error and seek Special Temporary Authority to operate at variance until a new license is issued. In the latter case, the corrected facilities will not be used for the reverse auction, nor protected in the repacking if licensed after May 29.  Accordingly, the Public Notice urges licensees to make use of the remaining window of opportunity to modify their authorizations to reflect the parameters that they wish to carry into the auction and repacking process.

As you may have guessed, there will be another form involved, so the Public Notice also officially releases Form 2100, Schedule 381, which stations will have to complete not only to make the certification above, but to provide a significant amount of technical information that the FCC has not previously collected.  The information appears designed to assist the FCC in analyzing the impact its repack decisions will have on individual stations and to identify hurdles to completing the repack in the 39-month time period the FCC anticipates.  Among the requested items are: the year of the last structural analysis of the station’s antenna structure and the standard under which that analysis was conducted; whether the station’s antenna is shared with another station and the antenna’s frequency range if it is capable of operating over multiple channels; and the make, model number and maximum power output capacity of the station’s transmitter.

The information sought is detailed and may take stations time to collect. However, today’s Public Notice announces that stations are expected to file the form within 30 days of the FCC’s release in June of its “protected facilities” list. Accordingly, all full power and Class A television stations that have not already done so should review their facility parameters as reflected in the FCC’s CDBS and Antenna Structure Registration databases to confirm their accuracy and immediately file any needed corrective applications. In doing so, stations should also compile the information they are going to need to complete Schedule 381, as the FCC will be looking for that completed form in July.

The FCC’s Media Bureau issued a Public Notice today announcing that it would immediately suspend the September 1, 2015 digital transition date for LPTV and TV translator stations. The FCC’s Second Report and Order had established the September 1 deadline for LPTV, TV translator, and Class A TV stations to terminate analog operations and transition to digital. However, in its Third Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC recognized that the upcoming spectrum auction and repacking process would likely displace a substantial number of LPTV and TV translator stations, and that 795 LPTV and 779 TV translator stations had not yet completed their digital conversion. Seeking to avoid requiring those stations to incur the costs of the digital transition prior to completion of the auction and repacking, the FCC proposed suspending the transition deadline. In today’s Public Notice, the FCC concluded that suspending the digital transition deadline would be appropriate to permit analog LPTV and TV translators to postpone construction of digital facilities that could be impacted by the spectrum auction and repacking.

The FCC’s decision, however, does not affect Class A TV stations, which are still required to complete the digital transition by the September 1 deadline. Class A stations that do not complete construction of their digital facilities by 11:59 pm, local time, on September 1, 2015 will be required to go dark until they complete construction of their digital facilities.

Additionally, although Class A stations are not required to cease analog transmissions until September 1, their digital facilities must be licensed or have an application for a license on file by May 29, 2015 for those digital facilities to be fully protected by the FCC in the repacking process. Any Class A station that fails to meet the May 29 Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline will be afforded protection based solely on the coverage area and population served by its analog facilities, as set forth in the Incentive Auction Report and Order.

The FCC has not announced when the new transition date will be, other than to say the deadline will come after final action in its LPTV DTV proceeding. According to the Third NPRM, the FCC is weighing the benefit of waiting until the close of the auction to establish a new deadline—which would allow the FCC to take into account the overall impact of the repacking process—against announcing a deadline sooner than the end of the auction, which could provide more certainty to LPTV and translator stations about when the digital transition will end and expedite the completion of that transition.

In a just released Public Notice, the Media Bureau has designated May 29, 2015, as the Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline. That is the date by which certain full-power and Class A TV stations must have a license application on file with the FCC in order for their modified facilities to be protected in the repacking process following the spectrum incentive auction.

While the FCC earlier concluded that full-power and Class A TV facilities licensed by February 22, 2012 would be protected in the repacking, it envisioned protection of TV facilities licensed after that date in a few specific situations. It is to this latter group that the May 29, 2015 deadline applies. These include:

• Full-power television facilities authorized by an outstanding channel substitution construction permit for a licensed station, including stations seeking to relocate from Channel 51 pursuant to voluntary relocation agreements with Lower 700 MHz A Block licensees;
• Modified facilities of full-power and Class A television stations that were authorized by construction permits granted on or before April 5, 2013, the date of the FCC’s announcement of a freeze on most television modification applications, or that have been authorized by construction permits that were granted after April 5, 2013, but which fit into one of the announced exceptions to the application freeze; and
• Class A TV stations’ initial digital facilities that were not licensed until after February 22, 2012, including those that were not authorized until after announcement of the modification application freeze.

Today’s announcement means that, with the exception of stations affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center, stations in the categories above must complete construction and have a license application on file with the FCC by the May 29, 2015 deadline if they wish to have those facilities protected in the repacking process. According to the Public Notice, licensees affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center may elect to protect either their licensed Empire State Building facilities or a proposed new facility at One World Trade Center as long as that new facility has been applied for and authorized in a construction permit granted by the May 29 deadline.

The Public Notice will inevitably cause some confusion, as it refers in a number of places to having a facility “licensed” by the May 29 deadline (e.g., “We also emphasize that, in order for a Class A digital facility to be afforded protection in the repacking process, it must be licensed by the Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline.”). Fortunately for those of us that read footnotes carefully (that’s what lawyers do!), the FCC stated in the small print that “[t]he term ‘licensed’ encompasses both licensed facilities and those subject to a pending license to cover application….”

For those holding TV licenses that are more interested in the spectrum auction than in the repacking of stations afterwards, the Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline is also relevant, as the FCC indicates that “[t]he Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline will also determine which facilities are eligible for voluntary relinquishment of spectrum usage rights in the incentive auction.” In other words, to the extent the FCC bases auction payments in part on a selling station’s coverage area, the facilities constructed by the Pre-Auction Licensing Deadline (with a license application on file) will be used in making that determination.

Finally, the Public Notice indicates that this is a “last opportunity” for full power and Class A TV stations to modify their licenses to correct errors in their stated operating parameters if they want the FCC to use the correct operating parameters in determining post-auction protection.

So, whether a television station owner is planning on being a seller or a wallflower in the spectrum auction, today’s announcement is an important one, and represents one of the FCC’s more concrete steps towards holding the world’s most complicated auction.