Before the Federal Communications Commission Washington, DC 20054
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Before the Federal Communications Commission Washington, DC 20054 In the Matter of ) ) Promoting Interoperability in the ) WT Docket No. 12-69 700 MHz Commercial Spectrum ) ) Interoperability of Mobile User ) RM-11592 (Terminated) Equipment Across Paired Commercial ) Spectrum Blocks in the 700 MHz Band ) COMMENTS OF AT&T SERVICES INC. David L. Lawson Michael P. Goggin James P. Young Gary L. Phillips C. Frederick Beckner III Peggy Garber Christopher T. Shenk AT&T Inc. Sidley Austin LLP 1120 20th Street, N.W. 1501 K Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 457-2055 (202) 736-8000 Attorneys for AT&T Services Inc. June 1, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY ............................................................................................1 I. A BAND 12 MANDATE WOULD GENERATE NO BENEFITS. .................................10 A. The A Block Licensees Can Obtain Affordable Band 12 LTE Devices Today. ....................................................................................................................10 B. A Band 12 Mandate Will Not Create New Roaming Options, As The A Block Licensees Already Have Numerous And Increasing Roaming Options. ..................................................................................................................16 II. AN INTEROPERABILITY MANDATE WOULD BE COSTLY AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. ..............................................................................................19 A. Reversing 3GPP Standards Years After The Fact Would Inflict Enormous Public Interest Harms. ............................................................................................21 B. A Band 12 Mandate Creates A Real Likelihood That AT&T LTE Services Will Suffer Substantially Increased Interference And That The Quality Of Its LTE Services Will Be Adversely Impacted. .....................................................27 1. Fundamental Principles Of Engineering And Physics Strongly Indicate That A Band 12 Mandate Would Subject AT&T To Substantially Increased Interference From Both Channel 51 and Block E Interference. .................................................................................28 2. The Potential Harms To Consumers And AT&T From Interference Would Be Substantial. ...............................................................................32 C. The Vulcan Testing Is Unreliable And Can Be Given No Weight ........................35 III. ALTHOUGH THE COMMISSION HAS BROAD JURISDICTION TO EVALUATE SPECTRUM-RELATED INTERFERENCE CLAIMS AND TO FASHION APPROPRIATE REMEDIES THAT PROMOTE COMPETITION, INTEROPERABILITY AND THE EFFICIENT USE OF SPECTRUM, THERE IS NO BASIS TO IMPOSE THE SPECIFIC BAND 12 MANDATE THE A BLOCK LICENSEES SEEK HERE. ................................................................................37 A. A Band 12 Mandate Would Be An Unlawful Retroactive License Modification. ..........................................................................................................38 B. No Provision Of The Act Permits This Retroactive Modification Of The B And C Block Licenses. ..........................................................................................40 IV. THE COMMISSION SHOULD TAKE PROACTIVE STEPS TO ELIMINATE THE INTERFERENCE FROM CHANNEL 51 AND THE E BLOCK. ..........................43 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................50 Before the Federal Communications Commission Washington, DC 20054 In the Matter of ) ) Promoting Interoperability in the ) WT Docket No. 12-69 700 MHz Commercial Spectrum ) ) Interoperability of Mobile User ) RM-11592 (Terminated) Equipment Across Paired Commercial ) Spectrum Blocks in the 700 MHz Band ) COMMENTS OF AT&T SERVICES INC. AT&T Services Inc. (“AT&T”) submits the following comments in response to the Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in WT Docket No. 12-69, issued on March 21, 2012.1 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY As the Commission’s Notice recognizes, industry-led efforts to establish and advance mobile wireless technical standards are far “preferable” to rigid regulatory mandates.2 To that end, the Commission has long maintained a hands-off, flexible use policy that permits all industry participants, through international standards-setting bodies and their collective best engineering judgments, to devise the technical standards on which carriers, device and network equipment manufacturers, chipset makers, and software developers worldwide rely. This sound policy has brought enormous consumer benefits. Broadband investment and innovation have flourished because of the certainty provided by a stable standards-setting process and because of 1 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Promoting Interoperability in the 700 MHz Commercial Spectrum; Interoperability of Mobile User Equipment Across Paired Commercial Spectrum Blocks in the 700 MHz Band, WT Docket No. 12-69 (Mar. 21, 2012) (“Notice”). 2 See Notice ¶ 49. the flexibility each carrier enjoys within those technical boundaries to obtain devices that best suit its network, spectrum holdings, and customers’ needs. Of course, standards-setting processes must work within constraints imposed by the Commission’s spectrum allocations, and the Lower 700 MHz band plan created unique challenges for the 3GPP standards-setting body. The Lower 700 MHz is bounded on both sides by spectrum that is or can be used for interfering high-power broadcasts: DTV Channel 51 (adjacent to the Lower 700 MHz A Block transmit frequencies) and the unpaired E Block (adjacent to the A Block receive frequencies). The response to these technical challenges illustrates the merit of the Commission’s hands-off policy: in an effort to promote spectral efficiency and protect as many consumers as possible from as much potential interference as possible, 3GPP established two standards, Band 12 (which covers the A, B, and C Blocks) and Band 17 (which covers the B and C Blocks and thus allows carriers operating only in those blocks to filter out interference from the high power transmissions adjacent to the A Block). Relying upon these standards, the industry has invested heavily over the past few years to develop network infrastructure, chipsets, software and other components to support a wide array of innovative multi-band LTE devices. With devices that operate not only in Bands 12 and 17, but also in various combinations of the many other LTE and non-LTE band classes, these standards-driven industry efforts have produced a robust, dynamic – and highly interoperable – multi-band device ecosystem that allows each operator to tailor its handset portfolio to its own spectrum holdings and those of its desired roaming partners. And with multiple, competing LTE networks already in operation, still more under construction, and millions of LTE devices – 2 many of them Band 17 devices – already in consumers’ hands, U.S. LTE deployment is the envy of the world, boasting nearly 90 percent of global LTE subscribers by the third quarter of 2011.3 Now, however, certain Lower 700 MHz licensees – who voiced no objection during the standards-setting process – ask the Commission, years after the fact, to mandate that all Lower 700 MHz licensees use Band 12. Such an unprecedented countermanding of the standards- setting body would undermine the integrity and predictability of the standards-setting process, retard broadband investment and deployment, threaten the reliability of existing LTE services, expose millions of consumers to additional interference risk, and yield none of the “interoperability” benefits upon which the proposed regulatory mandate is falsely premised. Proponents of regulation say that it is needed to promote two goals, but neither claim is correct. First, they claim that unless the Commission requires AT&T to switch to Band 12, device manufacturers will lack sufficient scale to create affordable Band 12 devices. This claim rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of wireless handset design. A manufacturer does not start from scratch each time it introduces a device with a new radio protocol. Rather, in the real world, wireless technologies always support multiple radio protocols and band classes, so manufacturers typically develop device platforms that can be configured to support any number of different protocols depending upon customer needs. Manufacturers thus can – and already do – readily create Band 12 variants of LTE devices first introduced for other band classes. As one A Block licensee has noted, the “[c]omponents that are required” to change a Band 17 device, for example, into a Band 12 device “are all < $1 and, in quantity, have no cost impact.”4 Indeed, the 3 See U.S./Canada No. 1 in LTE Connections with 87% Global Market Share, 4G Americas (Dec. 7, 2011), available at http://www.4gamericas.org/index.cfm?Fuseaction =pressreleasedisplay&pressreleaseid=3378. 4 See, e.g., Letter from Michele C. Farquhar (Vulcan) to Marlene Dortch (FCC), WT Docket No. 11-18, dated December 12, 2011, Attachment at 9 (emphasis added). 3 market has already refuted the A Block licensees’ claim that they need regulation to obtain Band 12 devices: US Cellular has announced that it is introducing a variety of Band 12 LTE devices this year, and it already sells a Band 12 smartphone, tablet, modem, and WiFi hotspot.5 Moreover, it is erroneous to believe that regulation would eliminate the need even for this routine, “no cost” customization. The A Block licensees could not use