(a) Eligibility.

(1) Parties seeking approval for partitioning and disaggregation shall request from the Commission an authorization for partial assignment of license. Geographic area licensees may participate in aggregation, disaggregation, and partitioning within the bands licensed on a geographic area basis. Site-based licensees may aggregate spectrum in any MAS bands, but may not disaggregate their licensed spectrum or partition their licensed sites.

(2) Eligible MAS licensees may apply to the Commission to partition their licensed geographic service areas to eligible entities and are free to determine the portion of their service areas to be partitioned. Eligible MAS licensees may aggregate or disaggregate their licensed spectrum at any time following the grant of a license.

(b) Technical standards—

(1) Aggregation.

(i) There is no limitation on the amount of spectrum that an MAS licensee may aggregate.

(ii) Spectrum licensed to MAS licensees does not count toward the CMRS spectrum cap discussed in §20.6 of this chapter.

(2) Disaggregation. Spectrum may be disaggregated in any amount. A licensee need not retain a minimum amount of spectrum.

(3) Partitioning. In the case of partitioning, applicants and licensees must file FCC Form 603 pursuant to §1.948 of this chapter and list the partitioned service area on a schedule to the application. The geographic coordinates must be specified in degrees, minutes, and seconds to the nearest second of latitude and longitude, and must be based upon the 1983 North American Datum (NAD83).

(4) Combined partitioning and disaggregation. The Commission will consider requests from geographic area licensees for partial assignment of licenses that propose combinations of partitioning and disaggregation.

(c) Construction requirements. Responsible parties must submit supporting documents showing compliance with the respective construction requirements within the appropriate construction benchmarks set forth in §101.1325.

(d) License term. The license term for a partitioned license area and for disaggregated spectrum shall be the remainder of the original licensee's license term as provided for in §101.1313.

[65 FR 17450, Apr. 3, 2000, as amended at 67 FR 45380, July 9, 2002; 82 FR 41549, Sept. 1, 2017]