The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that despite having made "consistent progress", the much-debated auction of low-frequency airwaves will be put off until early 2016. The agency cited complexity of the pursuit and court challenges filed by broadcasters.

The announcement came through a blog post published by Gary Eipstein, chair of the FCC's Incentive Auction Task Force.

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"Crafting the right policy decisions and designing a novel two-sided auction are important, but those decisions by themselves are not sufficient to ensure the auction's success," he wrote. "We also need broadcasters to participate."

The delay allows the FCC more time to convince TV network owners to take part by selling their airwaves for wireless use.

Originally scheduled for 2015, the FCC's auction was contested by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) over possible adverse effects to its members' businesses.

The success of this undertaking is seen to boost the services of smaller mobile broadband providers like Sprint and T-Mobile, in a market dominated by AT&T and Verizon Wireless. For the broadcasters, however, this can mean reduced coverage area and affected viewership. The FCC has maintained that the auction remains voluntary.

For those who will participate, the FCC has posed several options including going off-air, enter into a channel-sharing agreement with another broadcaster, or be moved to a lower frequency channel at a lower bid.

Reports say the court has issued a briefing schedule that sees the deadline of the final briefs moved up to January 2015, with oral arguments to follow at a later date.

Eipstein has expressed confidence over the rulings, saying: "Despite this brief delay, we remain focused on the path to successfully implementing the incentive auction."

The NAB immediately rejected FCC's statement citing the lawsuit as the cause of delay.

"As NAB has said repeatedly, it is more important to get the auction done right than right now," said the official response on the group's website.

Tagsairwaves auction, Federal Communications Commission, Mobile broadband, National Association of Broadcasters