WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission needs a “shot clock” when reviewing mergers, said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)
Kohl, who owns NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, has sponsored a bill with Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to require the FCC to make a decision on proposed mergers within seven months.
The FCC did not comment on the proposed legislation and was not represented at last week’s hearing of the Senate antitrust subcommittee. “We will just kind of have to see what happens,” said Joy Howell, director of the FCC’s Office of Public Affairs.
The Senate antitrust panel hearing last week showed there was little opposition to the concept of time limits for FCC merger reviews although the antagonists in the larger local competition debate differed on how long that review should be and what it should entail.
“I think you could make an argument for completely eliminating FCC review except for management of spectrum,” said Roy Neel, president and chief executive officer of the United States Telephone Association.
The Competitive Telecommunications Association urged an amendment that would “add to the bill a mechanism whereby the FCC, on a majority vote, could extend the bill’s 180-day time limit by 90 days,” said CompTel President H. Russell Frisby Jr.
DeWine, who chairs the Senate antitrust subcommittee, and Kohl, who is the ranking Democrat, expect to mark up the bill by end of the month.
The hearing on S. 467, the Antitrust Merger Review Act, comes on the heels of an agreement by the CEOs of Ameritech Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. to FCC Chairman William Kennard’s request for a 90-day negotiation to craft conditions by which the merger of the two companies can be approved by the FCC.
DeWine said Kennard’s request was too late. “After eight months of review, the FCC offered to start a ‘collaborative process’ with the parties, to examine five major areas of concern. This process is supposed to conclude by the end of June, more than a full year after the parties announced their merger. That is just too long,” he said.
A proposed outline contained in Kennard’s April 1 letter calls for a decision on the merger by the end of June. The schedule includes a public forum later this month to include FCC staff and SBC/Ameritech representatives reporting on the status of discussions and any conditions placed on the merger. Public-interest representatives then can comment at the forum on the tentative conditions and propose additional ones. All other meetings will be subject to FCC notification rules.
While DeWine and Kohl did not object to the collaborative process, not everyone on Capitol Hill has been so generous. Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House telecom subcommittee, sent an April 8 letter to the FCC, saying the agency may be exceeding its authority in requiring the negotiations.
The merger was approved last month by the Department of Justice with the only condition being that the companies divest themselves of overlapping wireless markets. Ameritech began this process when it sold some of its properties to GTE Corp.
