FCC's plan for new spectrum brings worry for T-Mobile

Kevin Martin, FCC's Chairman, has proposed that the innovators be given unlicensed and free access to airwaves provided that the company that buys the license to such airwaves can not meet the vigorous requirements to build a nationwide internet network.

With the addition of this proposal to the future auction, the FCC will vote on the rules on December 18th. What this proposal means is that the winner of the auction will have to dedicate at least 25% of the spectrum to 95% of the country for free internet access.

There are two versions of the auction platform; one with the proposal and the other without. Voting will take place only on one version, which ever the commissioners approve for the auction.

This is where T-Mobile comes into play. Engineers at T-Mobile have addressed an issue to the FCC that the airwaves in question are right next to the ones they own hence adversely effecting their spectrum resulting in drop calls or lost signal. The possible negative effects will come from uploads on the new spectrum.

The solution proposed by T-Mobile is that of pairing the new airwaves to 'another set of channels' for uploads and to limit the soon to be auctioned frequencies to downloads only.

The FCC has not included the request from T-Mobile in to the proposal put forth and has stated that they have done their own tests based on the accounts from the engineers concluding that they have put in a strong interference protection than ever before.

source: WSJ