The Office of Economics and Analytics and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (collectively, the “Bureaus”) have revealed that inadvertently, for under three hours, the license area selections on a small number of short-form applications submitted for Auction 103 were made publicly available and viewed publicly. Auction 103 is scheduled to begin December 10, 2019, and will offer Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service licenses in the Upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands. Thirty-nine short-form applications were submitted to participate in Auction 103. The Bureaus explain that when the FCC released the Public Notice announcing the auction applications as complete, the entire applications were also made publicly available including the Partial Economic Areas selected. While the Bureaus do not believe that this error will provide a material competitive advantage during the bidding, to mitigate any potential harm from the inadvertent availability of the license selection information, the Bureaus will allow certain applicants to change their license area selections during a limited time period. However, the Bureaus will not extend or change the date for upfront payments which are due before the date affected applicants can change license area selections. Accordingly, affected applicants must take any license area change into account when calculating upfront payments to ensure sufficient bidding eligibility.
