The FCC has issued a Public Notice providing additional guidance and clarification to lower 700 MHz A and B block licensees who must file electronic maps demonstrating compliance with the December 13, 2016 construction deadline. Specifically, the FCC provides clarity on issues related to demonstrating geographic coverage, leveraging the exception for Government Lands, and providing certain technical data. Among the issues clarified, the FCC states that when demonstrating compliance with a geographic benchmark, population benchmark file attributes are not required in the coverage shapefile. Geographic benchmark coverage showings should include an attribute table containing the geographic coverage area, total area, and the percentage of area covered. The FCC also clarifies that when demonstrating coverage within a particular licensed market, each filing must provide a coverage shapefile that shows where service is provided only within the licensed market. The FCC notes that all transmitter sites that contribute to the market coverage should be shown even if they are located outside the licensed market. The FCC also clarifies various issues regarding a licensee’s ability to count government land for purposes of meeting geographic construction benchmarks, and information that must be provided in shapefiles, including when there are layers of federal and state government lands that overlap. The FCC also clarifies issues regarding requests for confidentiality and what will be publicly available, and technical issues regarding uploading shapefiles, demonstrating signal strength, minimum data rates and backhaul analysis.
