Subject: [NEXTEL-1] No one using secondary market procedures to transfer spectrum

From: "marcel_rf1" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:31:52 -0000

No one using secondary market procedures to transfer spectrum

by Heather Forsgren Weaver
March 04, 2004 12:52 PM EST

WASHINGTON—No one has taken advantage of the much-hailed secondary-
market rules in their first month of effectiveness, said wireless 
bureau officials on Wednesday. 

"Thirty days and no applications yet," said Katherine Harris of the 
FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. 

Harris was attending a luncheon seminar given by her colleague David 
Furth, associate bureau chief and counsel of the FCC's Wireless 
Telecommunications Bureau. 

"Which in a sense doesn't surprise us," continued Furth. "I think 
there is a fair amount of interest but we were never anticipating 
when these rules went into effect there would be a flood tide of 
requests. I think what is happening is that the market, the industry 
and the communications lawyers are looking at the rules, looking at 
the process and trying to figure out how it fits in; how it adds to 
the existing secondary-markets regime. I think there are other 
factors including the condition of the telecom market that may also 
have an impact on what we might see over the course of the next few 
months. We certainly anticipate that there will be these 
transactions, but the question still is what the volume or the nature 
of those will be. We really do see this as an evolutionary process." 

The FCC has touted its secondary-markets rules as a way to better let 
the market decide the best use of spectrum. Furth said that the rules 
were a first step in a process to streamline regulatory review of 
spectrum usage that has gone on for 40 years. 

"We also had an incremental approach to leasing," said Furth in his 
opening comments at the seminar on spectrum-use rules in Europe and 
the United States. "Ultimately it took a very long time." 

The FCC is not done with its secondary-market rules. After adopting 
these rules, it asked further questions about how to make the process 
even better and whether certain entities like public safety could 
lease spectrum for short periods of time with contracts that would 
give them immediate access to spectrum if needed. 

If the current trend of not using the secondary-market rules 
continues, said Furth, the agency will be forced to look at what else 
it can do. 

"One of the things we are interested in is how is adding this tool to 
the toolbox? What potential do the users have at getting access to 
spectrum?" asked Furth. "From our point of view they represent an 
integrated whole. What we really need to look at the entire package 
of options that are available to spectrum users and spectrum rights 
holders that allows them to give up some or all of those rights. It 
would be a mistake to look at these rules in isolation.

http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=17161

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