Scott Delacourt Discusses FCC’s Upcoming Broadcast Incentive Auction

December 2, 2015

Scott D. Delacourt, a partner in Wiley Rein’s Telecom, Media & Technology (TMT) Practice and chair of the FTC Practice, was quoted in a Law360 article about top telecommunications issues including the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) upcoming broadcast incentive auction.

Television stations participating in the auction, set to begin in March 2016, will voluntarily sell some of their 600-megahertz spectrum licenses to the FCC in a reverse auction. In exchange, those broadcasters will receive a share of the proceeds when the FCC auctions the licenses to wireless carriers in a forward auction.

“The incentive auction is going to be the most complex auction the FCC has ever run,” Mr. Delacourt said. “There are lots of moving parts. I think in terms of preparation, everybody wants to make sure they have a mastery of those rules and they keep up to date as there are modifications and rule changes and activity in the lead-up to the auction.”

“There is a significantly greater degree of complexity with the 600-megahertz auction than there has been in the past,” he added. “I think we’re likely to see a continuing pattern of refinement of the rules.”

The article can be found here.