Verizon Wireless has claimed that it will begin to run out of its mobile broadband spectrum capacity as early as 2013 if it fails to acquire the unused spectrum currently held by cable operators. However, the Federal Communications Commission has doubts about the calculations that Verizon has made to reach that figure. It has also raised a number of questions about the deal that Verizon has made with cable providers that allows them to combine their wireline and wireless strength.
The FCC sent a letter to Verizon Wireless on Thursday, requesting it to provide it with all relevant documents on how the company reached these forecasts. Verizon claims that at its present rate of rise in traffic which is approximately doubling year-on-year, it will reach its spectrum capacity thresholds on both its LTE as well as its 3G EV-DO networks in at least some markets and throughout its whole network by December 2015. It said that unless it can get this new spectrum, which would be around 20MHz of AWS spectrum from cable operators, its customers could see their service quality suffer and connection speeds slow down.
The FCC also sent separate letters to each of the members of the cable operator consortium, called SpectrumCo, which has ownership of the AWS licenses. These members include Comcast, Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. The FCC asked them for an explanation regarding why they couldn’t use the spectrum that they currently own to start their own competing wireless service as they had originally intended to do so.
Comcast has previously gone into some detail regarding how SpectrumCo had indeed tried to release their own competing wireless service before failing in the process, but the CFO of Comcast, Mr. Michael Angelakis has recently gotten into trouble with the FCC’s Commissioner, Mr. Robert McDowell, for saying at a conference that SpectrumCo had never intended to use the spectrum it owned itself. The FCC has now asked for a full account of any attempts made by the cable operator consortium over the previous six years to provide any type of a wireless service. The FCC has referenced Mr. Angelakis’s statements in its letter to Comcast and demanded a full explanation for them.
Lastly, the FCC has asked all the parties involved in the deal to provide all the details regarding the marketing agreement. Many consumer advocacy groups such as Public Knowledge have long been asking for more transparency in this deal.
