Federal Communications Chair Kevin Martin rounded up the geek squad division of the D.C. press corp on Friday to announce that it's once more into the breach for the agnecy: the FCC is considering a new plan to auction off the public safety portion of the 700 MHz band that it couldn't sell in March. The proposal is quite complex, and sets up not only a contest for a national license, but a bidding system for regional licenses. There's even competition between WiMax and Long Term Evolution (LTE) high speed wireless systems in the plan.

As Ars spectrum watchers know, the Commission has for years been trying to forge a national broadband service for public safety agencies—fire, medical, police—that will bring interoperability and coordination to agencies who had a tough time communicating with each other during famous emergencies like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. But no bidder would buy the so-called public safety D Block of this year's 700 MHz auction.

An FCC audit of the setback discovered that potential purchasers just didn't think they could make a profitable go of the single national license as it had been constructed. And a subsequent request for public comments found that lots of big city public safety agencies would rather see the D Block chopped up into regional licenses that coordinate with each other when necessary.

National vs. regional

Ars had a lengthy conversation with FCC spokesperson Robert Kenny on Saturday, who patiently explained the latest proposal being circulated to the Commissioners. It is not for the faint of heart. In essence, as Ars understands it, the auction will operate as a kind of contest between the national public safety vision and the regional public safety vision. Here's how it works.

One of the two parallel auctions that the agency plans to hold aims to sell the D Block to a single bidder who will run both a commercial service and share the spectrum with public safety agencies via a leasing system. This time the FCC has reduced the minimum asking price to 750 million dollars, far less than the previous reserve bidding level of $1.33 billion. The point is not to fatten the United States Treasury, Kenny explained. "The priority is to try to move this forward." In addition, whoever wins the license will get more time to build it out and to be protected by a cap on lease charges from the safety groups.

But on top of that, the FCC will run another auction in parallel, this time for 58 regional licenses. Bidders will have the option of competing for the licenses in a WiMax or LTE environment. The agency's new rules also propose that the auction cannot succeed unless the regional players collectively pony up more money than the national bid raises.

WiMax v. LTE

If, however, the national bid fails again to attract that minimal reserve price, then the auction becomes by default a competition between regional WiMax and LTE. Whichever license system produces bids that serve the most population or raise the most money will become the preferred platform for the regional licenses, as long as at least 50 percent of those licenses are sold nationally. The losing transmission type will be ruled out (i.e., either WiMAX or LTE), and the FCC will re-auction the rest of the licenses in the successful type, at a reduced price.

If this scenario is not complicated enough for Ars readers, take hope. At present it's just a proposal that's circulating among the Commissioners, whose staffs may have additional suggestions for the auction. And if a majority support the concept at the agency's next Open Commission meeting, scheduled for September 25, the Commission will release the plan as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The subsequent comment cycle could bring additional creativity to the process.

But as Verizon and AT&T prepare to roll out their new LTE systems in the 700 MHz range, and Clearwire and Sprint plot a national WiMax service, this proposed auction could function as an interesting poll for which platform the public sector prefers.