WASHINGTON-The FCC’s Advisory Committee on Diversity in Communications in the Digital Age recommended Monday that the Federal Communications Commission hang tough on setting aside spectrum for small businesses, but one panelist with a wireless subsidiary abstained and the wireless industry spoke out against the recommendation.
“From our perspective it is not whether to support meaningful participation, it is how best to support meaningful participation,” said Diane Cornell, vice president of regulatory policy of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. “The track record of bidding credits is one of success while the track record of set asides has been one of failure.”
The FCC has been struggling against large wireless carriers’ desires that it open the bidding in the upcoming NextWave re-auction to all bidders. It keeps affirming that it will set aside certain licenses for small businesses, and the large carriers keep complaining.
Julia Johnson, chairwoman of the diversity advisory committee, said the committee had received formal comments against the recommendation from T-Mobile USA Inc. and CTIA.
Vonya McCann, senior vice president of federal external affairs for Sprint Corp., abstained from voting. While she was not the only abstention, there were no votes in opposition.
The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau said recently it is going forward with plans to auction the licenses returned by bankrupt NextWave Telecom Inc. and other PCS licenses and said a CTIA request to open the bidding was “beyond the scope,” and it would deal with it at a later time.
The Rural Telecommunications Group, which represents rural wireless carriers, applauded the bureau’s action.
To be eligible to bid for the closed licenses, an entity and its affiliates must have combined total assets of less than $500 million and must have had combined gross revenues of less than $125 million in each of the last two years.
The FCC expects to begin auctioning the licenses Jan. 12-five years to the day that the FCC cancelled the licenses, the action that set it on a collision course with the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, the court ruled in NextWave’s favor. NextWave returned the licenses as part of a settlement negotiated earlier this year.
