Congress considering proposal to auction public safety’s 4.9 GHz spectrum instead of T-Band

Under the 2012 law, the FCC is supposed to initiate T-Band auction proceedings by Feb. 22, 2021, and public-safety incumbents would have to vacate the spectrum within two years of the auction bidding closing. Public-safety officials have backed recent legislation that would repeal the T-Band requirement. Some of the reasons cited to support the repeal include:

• Public-safety LMR network operating on T-Band spectrum include some of largest systems in country, and there is not enough LMR spectrum in many markets to relocate them;
• Some had hoped that FirstNet would provide a mission-critical voice option that would allow public-safety agencies to migrate from LMR networks to public-safety LTE. Mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) service is scheduled to be provided on the FirstNet system by the end of this year, but it is unclear how long it will take before public-safety agencies are ready to trust the technology enough to retire LMR networks;
• Given the size of the LMR systems in the T-Band, it would be expensive to relocate the public-safety users. In 2013, NPSTC issued a report estimating that relocation of public-safety LMR systems would cost $5.9 billion.
• Clearing public safety from the T-Band would not necessarily make the spectrum easy to auction. There are still several business-industrial LMR incumbents that were not addressed in the 2012 and have been left in limbo during the past six years.

In addition, many wireless industry observers note that carriers’ appetite for low-band spectrum seems to have changed significantly during the past few years, causing many to question whether a spectrum auction would attract the kind of bid necessary to cover T-Band users’ relocation costs—assuming spectrum could be found to relocate the LMR systems.

Verizon and Sprint did not bid in the recent 600 MHz auction, and AT&T made limited bids after gaining access to the FirstNet spectrum. The big 600 MHz winner was T-Mobile, but many question whether it would need to bid on more low-band spectrum, especially if it gains access to Sprint’s spectrum via the pending merger between those nationwide carriers.

In contrast, carriers recently have demonstrated greater interest in millimeter-wave spectrum with hundreds of megahertz of contiguous airwaves, with Verizon and AT&T recently engaging in a multibillion-dollar bidding war for a company with significant licenses in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands.

If Congress lifts the T-Band clearance for public-safety entities, it is unclear whether affected T-Band systems would be required to complete the narrowbanding process that was mandated for other licensees operating on spectrum below 512 MHz, according to multiple sources. The FCC waived the narrowbanding requirement for T-Band licensees after Congress passed the 2012 law.

Public-safety organizations sought the waiver, stating that  narrowbanding systems that were scheduled to be relocated years later would not be the best use of public funds. If the T-band systems are not going to be relocated, it is possible that they could be subjected to narrowbanding. In New York City, the cost of rebanding the T-Band system was estimated to be in excess of $100 million in 2011.