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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 39 / Tuesday, March 2, 2021 / Proposed Rules
jbell on DSKJLSW7X2PROD with PROPOSALS

Results below $1,000 will be rounded down to the nearest $100; results between $1,000 and $10,000 will be rounded down to the nearest $1,000;
results between $10,000 and $100,000
will be rounded down to the nearest $10,000; and results above $100,000
will be rounded down to the nearest $100,000. The proposed rounding procedures would lessen the differences between minimum bid amounts for licenses in counties with similar population instead of reflecting relatively small differences in total potential MHz-pops that are not necessarily representative of the available white space. The Commission seeks comment on these minimum bid amounts, which are specified in the Attachment A file on the Auction 108
website at www.fcc.gov/auction/108. If commenters believe that these minimum bid amounts would result in unsold licenses or are not reasonable amounts, they should explain their reasoning and propose an alternative approach. Commenters should support their claims with valuation analyses and suggested amounts or formulas for minimum bids. The Commission does not propose a separate aggregate reserve price, below which the auction would not conclude, and it seeks comment on that proposal. The Commission is not aware at this time of circumstances that require establishment of an aggregate reserve price in the public interest for this auction of overlay licenses in the 2.5 GHz band and propose only the minimum bids that it discusses here.
4. Package Bidding 48. For the single-round format, the Commission proposes a flexible form of package bidding, which would allow bidders to submit bids for packages of multiple licenses within the same county or for multiple geographic area licenses, i.e., licenses covering multiple metropolitan counties within a specified geographic region.
49. Packages of Multiple Blocks within a County. For the single-round format, the Commission proposes to allow a bidder to submit package bids for two or three licenses in a single county, in order to give the bidder more control in this single-round auction over the number and combination of licenses that it may win. By contrast, in a multiple-round auction, a bidder has greater ability to shape the combination of licenses that it is assigned. The Commission proposes these limited package bidding procedures for the single-round format to address a bidders need to win at least two or three blocks in a county if it wins any blocks. This would enable a bidder to
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ensure that if it won any licenses in a county, it would win sufficient licenses to facilitate high-bandwidth services and applications. A package bid would consist of a group of licenses and a single price that would apply to the entire group. The bidding system would determine the winning combination of licenses taking into account that all or none of the licenses in a package bid are to be assigned to the bidder.
50. For example, if a bidder is interested in winning any two license blocks in a county, but not a single license or all three licenses, it could submit three package bids for each of the two-license block combinations in the county. The bidder would be ensured of winning two licenses if it wins any of them.
51. Packages of Multiple Metropolitan Counties. The Commission proposes procedures to permit certain package bids that include licenses in multiple metropolitan counties, as long as the counties in a bid are within a given geographic region or area. The Commission proposes to define metropolitan for this purpose as those counties that are not subject to the small-market bidding credit cap.
Counties located within any PEA with a population of 500,000 or less are subject to the small-market bidding credit cap. Thus, metropolitan counties are those located within any PEA with a population greater than 500,000.
52. For the single round format, the Commission proposes to limit an individual package bid further to include licenses only in metropolitan counties that lie within the same Major Economic Area MEA. This limitation would enable packaging across the interdependent counties in a metropolitan market, would prevent the submission of overly broad packages, and recognizes the need to maintain bidding and computational manageability. There are 51 MEAs nationwide; MEAs are intermediate in size between Economic Areas EAs and Regional Economic Area Groupings REAGs. In addition, the Commission will license Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa, which have been assigned Commission-created MEA numbers 49
51, respectively. Therefore, a single package bid could include licenses in two or more metropolitan counties in a given MEA; the non-metropolitan counties in the MEA could be bid for only as single counties but potentially as packages of two or three licenses in a single county. Finally, for computational reasons, the Commission proposes that the total number of
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package and/or individual bids that a bidder may submit involving metropolitan counties in an MEA is limited to 250. If the number of individual licenses available in the metropolitan counties in a single MEA
exceeds 250, an exception to the limit would permit a bidder to submit a bid for each individual license. The Commission does not propose a limit on individual county-level bids, package or otherwise, that do not involve metropolitan counties.
53. A package bid would consist of a set of licenses in a set of counties and a single price applicable to the entire set of licenses in those counties. Within the proposed limits the Commission sets forth here, a bidder could include any combination of counties in a package i.e., packages would not be pre-defined.
54. In proposing these procedures for package bidding for the single-round format, the Commission aims to balance the needs of smaller entities with very localized interests with the requirements of entities that wish to create larger networks. Permitting packages of the licenses within a county provides a simple mechanism for a bidder to guard against winning an undesirable combination or number of licenses in a single county, which is likely to be useful to all bidders.
Allowing multiple-county packages of licenses only for metropolitan areas addresses the needs of entities with larger networks to ensure that they do not win an undesired patchwork of more heavily populated areas. In such areas, counties of smaller and greater competitiveness may make winning such patchworks potentially more likely. At the same time, limiting the scope of multiple-county packages to metropolitan counties within a single MEA reduces the potential for a bidder to leverage a highly-valued aggregation in one area in order to win licenses in other areas where bidders for individual counties may be the more efficient users of those licenses. Moreover, limits on package bids help reduce complexity for the bidder and enhance computational feasibility.
55. The Commission seeks comment on these procedures to allow bidding for packages of multiple licenses within a single county and for packages of bids for multiple metropolitan counties within an MEA. The Commission asks commenters to consider how changes they suggest to these procedures might impact the different needs of the wide variety of potential bidders that may be interested in Auction 108. In particular, the Commission seeks comment on the use of MEAs as the relevant region for limiting the metropolitan counties that
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