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[FR Doc. 2014–26300 Filed 11–5–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6560–50–P 

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS 

COMMISSION 

47 CFR Parts 0, 1, 2, 15, 27, 73, and 74 

[GN Docket No. 12–268; FCC 14–143] 

Expanding the Economic and 

Innovation Opportunities of Spectrum 

Through Incentive Auctions 

AGENCY: Federal Communications 

Commission. 

ACTION: Clarification. 

SUMMARY: This document clarifies how 

the Commission intends to preserve the 

‘‘coverage area’’ as well as the 

‘‘population served’’ of eligible 

broadcasters in the repacking process 

associated with the broadcast television 

spectrum incentive auction. This action 

is taken in order to remove any 

uncertainty regarding the repacking 

approach the Commission adopted in 

the Incentive Auction R&O. 

DATES: Effective November 6, 2014. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Aspasia Paroutsas, Office of Engineering 

and Technology, 202–418–7285, 

Aspasia.Paroutsas@fcc.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This is a 

summary of the Commission’s 

Declaratory Ruling, GN Docket No. 12– 

268, FCC 14–143, adopted September 

20, 2014 and released September 30, 

2014. The full text of this document is 

available for inspection and copying 

during normal business hours in the 

FCC Reference Center (Room CY–A257), 

445 12th Street SW., Washington, DC 

20554. The complete text of this 

document also may be purchased from 

the Commission’s copy contractor, Best 

Copy and Printing, Inc., 445 12th Street 

SW., Room, CY–B402, Washington, DC 

20554. The full text may also be 

downloaded at: www.fcc.gov. People 

with Disabilities: To request materials in 

accessible formats for people with 

disabilities (braille, large print, 

electronic files, audio format), send an 

email to fcc504@fcc.gov or call the 

Consumer & Governmental Affairs 

Bureau at 202–418–0530 (voice), 202– 

418–0432 (tty). 

Summary of Declaratory Ruling 

1. In this Declaratory Ruling, the 

Commission clarifies how it intends to 

preserve the ‘‘coverage area’’ as well as 

the ‘‘population served’’ of eligible 

broadcasters in the repacking process 

associated with the broadcast television 

spectrum incentive auction. The 

Commission takes this action in order to 

remove any uncertainty regarding the 

repacking approach it adopted in the 

Incentive Auction R&O, 79 FR48442, 

August 15, 2014. The Commission 

addresses each of these factors 

independently and in a manner that 

fully comports with Congress’s mandate 

to make ‘‘all reasonable efforts’’ to 

‘‘preserve’’ both coverage area and 

population served as of the enactment 

date of the Spectrum Act. 

Background 

2. The Spectrum Act requires the 

Commission, in repacking the television 

bands to repurpose spectrum through 

the incentive auction, to ‘‘make all 

reasonable efforts to preserve, as of the 

date of the enactment of the Act 

[February 22, 2012], the coverage area 

and population served of each broadcast 

television licensee, as determined using 

the methodology described in OET 

Bulletin 69.’’ In the Incentive Auction 

R&O, the Commission interpreted 

‘‘coverage area,’’ consistent with the 

definition of ‘‘service area’’ in OET 

Bulletin 69 (OET–69) and 47 CFR 

73.622(e), as the area within a full 

power station’s noise-limited F(50,90) 

contour where the signal strength is 

predicted to exceed the noise-limited 

service level, and as the area within a 

Class A station’s protected contour. The 

Commission interpreted ‘‘population 

served,’’ consistent with OET–69 and 47 

CFR 73.616(e), to mean persons who 

reside within a station’s ‘‘coverage area’’ 

at locations where the signal is not 

subject to interference from other 

stations. 

3. Section 6403(b)(2) requires that the 

Commission determine each eligible 

station’s ‘‘coverage area’’ and 

‘‘population served’’ using ‘‘the 

methodology described in OET Bulletin 

69.’’ The OET–69 methodology has two 

major steps. First, ‘‘service area or 

coverage’’—the area within a station’s 

relevant contour where the signal 

strength is predicted to exceed a 

specified level—is determined using 2- 

kilometer spacing increments or ‘‘cells.’’ 

Second, interference from other stations 

is evaluated on a cell-by-cell basis 

within that area. The result of the 

interference analysis is data that 

indicate the population and area (in 

square kilometers) within the ‘‘coverage 

area’’ lost to interference from other 

stations. 

4. While OET–69 does not provide 

standards for preserving a television 

station’s coverage area or population 

served, the Commission’s rules provide 

that applications for new or modified 

digital television station facilities are 

acceptable if they are not predicted to 

cause interference ‘‘to more than an 

additional 0.5 percent of the population 

served . . . by another DTV station.’’ In 

other words, the rules protect from 

interference populated portions of a 

station’s coverage area that are not lost 

to existing interference from other 

stations. Consistent with this standard, 

the Commission adopted a 0.5 percent 

interference threshold in the Incentive 

Auction R&O. The Commission also 


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determined that preserving service for 

the specific viewers who had access to 

a station’s signal as of February 22, 

2012, would best comport with the ‘‘all 

reasonable efforts’’ mandate. However, 

the Commission rejected arguments that 

section 6403(b)(2) ‘‘is a ‘hold harmless’ 

provision that requires the Commission 

to identify ‘extraordinary’ or ‘truly 

exceptional’ circumstances before 

altering a station’s coverage area and 

population served.’’ 

Discussion 

5. The Commission is concerned that 

the Incentive Auction R&O left some 

uncertainty regarding how it intends to 

carry out the statutory preservation 

mandate in the repacking process. The 

Commission now clarifies that it will 

independently protect each eligible 

station’s ‘‘coverage area’’ and its 

‘‘population served’’ as defined in the 

Incentive Auction R&O. In doing so, the 

Commission will seek to preserve each 

station’s coverage area as determined 

using the methodology described in 

OET–69. If the station is reassigned to 

a different channel, its coverage area on 

its original channel will be replicated as 

closely as possible, using the same 

antenna pattern and other technical 

parameters and allowing power 

adjustments as necessary to enable the 

signal to reach the same geographic area 

at the same field strength as before the 

repacking process. As the Commission 

explained in the Incentive Auction R&O, 

this ‘‘equal area’’ approach will enable 

a station to ‘‘replicat[e] the area within 

the station’s existing contour as closely 

as possible using the station’s existing 

antenna pattern.’’ Consistent with OET– 

69 and our rules, the Commission will 

seek to preserve coverage area without 

regard to interference from other 

stations or population. 

6. Independent of our efforts to 

preserve each station’s ‘‘coverage area,’’ 

the Commission also will seek to 

preserve its population served, again as 

determined using the methodology 

described in OET–69, by prohibiting 

any channel assignment in the 

repacking process that would cause one 

station to interfere with 0.5 percent or 

more of another station’s population 

served. As ‘‘population served’’ by 

definition excludes unpopulated areas 

and areas where a station’s signal 

cannot be received due to existing 

interference from other stations, the 

Commission will not protect such areas 

from new interference in the repacking 

process. 

7. The Incentive Auction R&O stated 

that the constraint files the Commission 

will use during the repacking process 

‘‘will match the coverage area of a 

station to the degree that the area is 

populated.’’ The Commission clarifies 

that this statement concerns the 

mechanics of the repacking process, not 

the ‘‘coverage area’’ or ‘‘population 

served’’ that it will seek to preserve for 

each eligible station as set forth above. 

The Commission further clarifies that 

area’s where a station’s signal is lost to 

existing interference from other stations, 

as determined using the methodology in 

OET–69, will not be protected in the 

repacking process. 

8. The Commission’s approach is 

consistent with the statutory 

preservation mandate. First, as 

indicated, our approach comports with 

OET–69 and FCC rules. ‘‘Congress is 

presumed to be cognizant of, and 

legislate against the background of, 

existing interpretations of law.’’ 

Although the statutory terms ‘‘coverage 

area’’ and ‘‘population served’’ are 

related—in particular, ‘‘population 

served’’ is limited by the boundaries of 

‘‘coverage area’’—they have 

independent significance under OET–69 

and our rules. ‘‘Coverage area’’ defines 

the geographic region within which a 

signal is predicted to have a specified 

field strength, whereas ‘‘population 

served’’ represents the populated areas 

within that region where the signal is 

not subject to existing interference from 

other stations. The Commission fulfills 

the statutory obligation to ‘‘preserve’’ a 

station’s coverage area in our repacking 

process by ensuring that they can 

continue to operate at technical 

parameters sufficient to maintain their 

coverage areas as of February 22, 2012. 

The Commission ‘‘preserves’’ the 

station’s population served by 

protecting it from interference from 

other stations in areas where viewers 

received the station’s signal as of that 

date. Our interpretation does not negate 

the statutory mandate for preservation 

of a station’s coverage area — as would 

arguably be the case, for instance, if we 

required a station to reduce its 

transmission power or otherwise modify 

their facilities to reduce their coverage 

area to conform it to the area of 

population served. By contrast, 

according interference protection to 

‘‘coverage area’’ without regard to 

‘‘population served’’ would depart from 

OET–69 and our rules. 

9. Second, the Commission’s 

interpretation is consistent with 

Congress’s mandate to ‘‘preserve’’ 

service as of the statutory enactment 

date, which we observed in the 

Incentive Auction R&O ‘‘suggests that 

the goal is to maintain the status quo,’’ 

consistent with the Commission’s 

historical concern ‘‘with avoiding 

disruption of service to existing 

viewers.’’ By seeking to preserve each 

station’s ‘‘coverage area’’ as set forth, the 

Commission will ensure that its signal 

reaches substantially the same 

geographic area at the same field 

strength after the repacking process as it 

did before. By independently protecting 

each station’s ‘‘population served’’ from 

interfering signals, the Commission will 

ensure that its signal reaches the same 

viewers before and after the repacking 

process, subject only to the de minimis 

interference permitted under the 

Commission’s rules for new or modified 

station facilities. In contrast, protecting 

a station’s ‘‘coverage area’’ from 

interfering signals without regard to its 

‘‘population served’’ would result in 

more expansive protection than stations 

received under the rules in effect at the 

time the Spectrum Act was enacted. 

10. Third, the Commission’s 

interpretation is consistent with 

Congress’s ‘‘all reasonable efforts’’ 

mandate. As explained in the Incentive 

Auction R&O, in the context of a statute 

with important goals other than 

preservation of existing television 

service, in particular the goal of 

repurposing spectrum, the ‘‘all 

reasonable efforts’’ mandate militates 

against a statutory interpretation that 

would limit our ability to repack the 

television bands efficiently and thereby 

threaten the auction’s overall success in 

repurposing spectrum. Expanding the 

interference protection provided in the 

repacking process beyond that provided 

under the pre-Spectrum Act rules to 

unpopulated or unserved (due to 

existing interference from other stations) 

portions of each station’s coverage area 

would significantly constrain our 

flexibility in the repacking process and 

impair the efficiency of the final 

television channel assignment scheme: 

A station could not be assigned to a 

channel if the assignment would cause 

signal overlap with another station 

within either station’s coverage area, 

even if such overlap occurred only in 

geographic areas where the stations do 

not have viewers because the areas are 

uninhabited, uninhabitable, or service 

was unavailable in the areas due to 

existing interference from other stations. 

As a result of such inefficiency, the 

prospects for the auction’s overall 

success would be substantially 

threatened. 

Ordering Clauses 

11. The actions in this Declaratory 

Ruling has not changed the Final 

Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA), 

which was set forth in the Incentive 

Auction R&O. Thus, no supplemental 

FRFA is necessary. In addition, the 

action contained herein does not change 


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the information collection requirements 

subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act 

of 1995 (‘‘PRA’’), Public Law 104–13, 

contained in the Incentive Auction R&O. 

As a result, no new submission to the 

Office of Management and Budget is 

necessary to comply with the PRA 

requirements. 

12. Pursuant to the authority found in 

Sections 1, 4, 301, 303, and 307 of the 

Communications Act of 1934, as 

amended, and sections 6402 and 6403 of 

Middle Class Tax Relief and Job 

Creation Act of 2012, Public Law 112– 

96, 126 Stat. 156, 47 U.S.C. 151, 154, 

301, 303, and 307, and section 1.2 of the 

Commission’s rules, 47 CFR 1.2, the 

Declaratory Ruling is adopted. 

13. The Declaratory Ruling adopted 

herein shall be effective upon release. 

14. The Commission’s Consumer and 

Governmental Affairs Bureau, Reference 

Information Center, shall send a copy of 

this Declaratory Ruling in GN Docket 

No. 12–268 to the Chief Counsel for 

Advocacy of the Small Business 

Administration. 

15. The Commission will not send a 

copy of the Declaratory Ruling pursuant 

to the Congressional Review Act, see 5 

U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A), because the 

Commission did not adopt any new 

rules here. 

Federal Communications Commission. 

Marlene H. Dortch, 

Secretary. 

[FR Doc. 2014–26038 Filed 11–5–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6712–01–P 


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