WASHINGTON-The most conservative member of the Federal Communications Commission last week said the current microscopic review of telecommunications mergers is unfair given the lack of attention the FCC is expected to give to the merger between oil giants Exxon and Mobile.
“If the issue is that we are going to review only those companies that we have traditionally regulated, we should put that in writing,” said FCC Commission Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
The theory was denounced by FCC Chairman William Kennard, who said, “If there is anyone here that thinks that the Exxon-Mobile merger will [impact] the future of the telecommunications [marketplace], I wish they would come before me because I am not aware of such [impact].”
The verbal exchange between Kennard and Furchtgott-Roth came during a merger en banc hearing held last week at the FCC. Many consumer advocates, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, urged the FCC to either deny the mergers or place heavy conditions on them.
The FCC is reviewing the pending mergers of SBC Communications Inc./Ameritech Corp., GTE Corp/Bell Atlantic Corp. and AT&T Corp./Tele-Communications Inc. under its public interest standard obligations. The FCC must determine it is in the public interest to transfer licenses of one company to another company following merger approval from the Department of Justice.
The merging companies say their unions are necessary to create national, global telecom players and will lead to local exchange competition as they compete out of their regions.
The FCC could examine the mergers under the Clayton Act anti-trust standard but has chosen not to do so because case law would too tightly constrain the FCC, said Paul Misener, chief of staff to Furchtgott-Roth.
Even though Mobile has more telecommunications licenses-in the form of private wireless licenses-than Ameritech, the FCC is not expected to scrutinize the merger, Misener said.
“We are talking about apples and oranges,” said Sharpe Smith, spokesman for the Industrial Telecommunications Association. ITA is a trade association representing private wireless interests. “Since telecom companies use their licenses to generate their main source of revenue, a telecom merger differs radically from a merger between two oil concerns or two private concerns. Logically that leads us to say that since private wireless concerns use their licenses as tools to maintain public safety and their productivity, you are not going to see the same [public-interest] concerns,” Smith added.
The transfer process for private wireless licenses is “ministerial,” according to Furchtgott-Roth. In fact, should the licensing staff in Gettysburg, Pa., not find anything wrong with the transfer, the transfer would be completed by the licensing branch. There is no public comment period on the transfer of private wireless licenses like there is with the transfer of commercial wireless licenses.
If someone has a complaint about a proposed transfer, the person can file an informal complaint.
The only other avenue for those opposing a license transfer would be to file a petition for reconsideration within 30 days after the transfer had been announced by the FCC.
