FCC Moves Dates for Incentive Auction Webinars

The FCC has announced new dates for webinars to help broadcasters, wireless operators and others negotiate the upcoming incentive auction, currently slated for early 2016 and rightly billed as the most complicated auction ever undertaken by the FCC.

The process consists of a forward auction in which broadcasters bid to give up spectrum (low bid wins, like a government contract), then a forward auction in which, presumably, wireless carriers bid for licenses for that reclaimed broadcast spectrum.

The forward auction webinar will be Thursday, Jan. 15, at 10:30 a.m., and the reverse auction webinar will be Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 10:30 a.m.

There will be a third webinar Friday, Jan. 23, also at 10:30 a.m., on how the two auctions will be integrated.

The dates had originally been Jan. 12, 15, and 20. A Wireless Bureau spokesperson was not available for comment on why the dates had been changed.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.