Broadcast television spectrum incentive auctions in the U.S.: trends, challenges, and opportunities

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the upcoming television broadcast spectrum incentive auction in the U.S., which will be the first ever attempted worldwide, and discusses the main business, regulatory, and technical challenges of a successful incentive auction. The process combines two separate but linked auctions: a reverse auction, which will identify the prices at which broadcasters are willing to relinquish their spectrum; and a forward auction, which will determine the price mobile network operators are willing to pay to acquire the new frequencies. The two auctions will determine the buyers and sellers and also the amount of spectrum to be cleared in the 600 MHz band after reorganizing the television stations that remain on air. This process is known as repacking and will create contiguous blocks of cleared spectrum at the high frequency side of the UHF band for mobile use. The article also reviews the potential plans for the 600 MHz band and discusses the opportunities that could bring about the new digital terrestrial television standard known as ATSC 3.0.