I am not a happy camper.
According to the FCC's Final Order for auctioning off the rest of the C-band spectrum, we are being robbed of receiving any compensation for the costs incurred in migrating our systems to new antennas, LNBs, etc. when they sell off the 4000-4160 MHz portion of C-band to the cell phone companies.
Instead of being able to register your dish for compensation now, they are saying "**** you" to anybody who didn't have their antennas registered well before the FIRST portion of the C-band spectrum was sold off. You had to be registered in the FCC's database OVER EIGHT YEARS AGO, well before the first portion of C-band (3700-4000 MHz) was auctioned off, well before there were any promises of compensation to be offered, and they expected you to pay a hefty registration fee of $495 per antenna without any guarantee of compensation back then. Remember with all the insane inflation that has occurred, $495 in 2018 was worth closer to $1,000 today! That was a huge expense to ask of people when you didn't tell them there would be any benefit to jumping through those hoops.
Now in order to receive any compensation for the upcoming 4000-4160 MHz range that's being sold off next year, instead of them allowing us Upper C-band incumbents to register our earth stations to receive compensation, they are only compensating those who blindly registered in 2018 well before that first C-band spectrum sell off occurred! This is INSANE and should really be illegal.
Anyone investing in a system after 2018 had no reason to believe they were going to steal the entire C-band 7 years later, and we expected that if they did decide to steal away more spectrum, we would at least be able to be compensated after a second round of earth registrations were allowed before the second spectrum auction occurred. Us 2018-2026 C-band people are incumbents in this spectrum too and this is total B.S.! We deserve to be compensated for our migration costs too.
Per their guidelines on who is eligible to receive compensation for their transition costs from this auctioning off of the rest of the C-band spectrum:
Page 98:
(3) Incumbent earth station. An incumbent earth station for this subpart O is defined as an earth
station that is entitled to interference protection pursuant to § 25.138(c) of this chapter. An incumbent
earth station must transition out of the 4000–4160 MHz band pursuant to this subpart O. An incumbent
earth station will be able to continue receiving uninterrupted service both during and after the transition.
Page 91:
§ 25.138 Earth Stations in the 3.7–4.2 GHz band.
(a) Applications for new, modified, or renewed earth station licenses and registrations in the 3.7–
4.16 GHz portion of the band in CONUS are no longer accepted.
(c) Fixed and temporary fixed earth stations operating in the 3.7–4.16 GHz portion of the band
within CONUS will be protected from interference by licensees in the 3.7 GHz Service subject to the
deadlines set forth in § 27.1412 of this chapter and are eligible for transition so long as they:
(1) Were operational as of April 19, 2018 and continue to be operational;
(2) Were licensed or registered (or had a pending application for license or registration) in the
IBFS (now ICFS) database on November 7, 2018
