The FCC Public Safety Bureau extended by an...
The FCC Public Safety Bureau extended by an additional six months, until June 30, the “true-up” date for calculating whether Sprint owes the government money as part of the 800 MHz transition. When the FCC approved the 800 MHz rebanding…
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in 2004 it required Nextel, before its merger with Sprint, to pay the total value of the 10 MHz national spectrum license it got as part of deal. At the time, the FCC set the price of the license at $4.8 billion. Subtracting the value of the spectrum Nextel agreed to give up, $2 billion, left $2.8 billion Nextel had to cover by paying for the rebanding. The FCC has been extending the true-up deadline in six-month increments since 2008. While the Broadband Auxiliary Service relocation “is now complete and substantial progress has been made in 800 MHz rebanding, a significant number of 800 MHz licensees have yet to complete the process, and rebanding in the US-Mexico border region has only recently begun,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1dPhzaV). While Sprint has contended that enough has been paid out that the government can now conclude no money will be owed, the 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) has advised that taking this step would be “premature,” the bureau said. “We conclude that conducting a true-up of Sprint’s rebanding expenditures as of December 31, 2013 would be premature. Accordingly, we provisionally extend the true-up date, as recommended by the TA, until June 30, 2014, and direct the TA to file a report by May 15, 2014, with its recommendation on whether the true-up should be conducted as of June 30, 2014, or be further postponed."