FCC commissioner blasts Dish Network move as a ‘rip off’
WASHINGTON – Pay TV giant Dish Network placed winning bids totaling $13 billion in the recent Federal Communication Commission spectrum auction, but because of a loophole that designates the company as a “small business,” some of those bids are discounted by 25%.
At stake is a $7.8 billion winning bid Dish executed via newly formed Alaskan subsidiary Northstar Wireless; with the loophole, Dish will save – and American taxpayer coffers will not receive – more than $3 billion.
Dish Network owns 85% of Northstar with the other 15% owned by Doyon Limited, which is controlled by Native Americans.
Under a 1993 statute, Native American corporations are automatically considered by the U.S. government to be a “very small business.”
Critics allege that under this arrangement Dish was able to gobble up more than its fair share of spectrum at the expense of smaller carriers who had the deck stacked against them.
The situation has created a rare feeling of bipartisanship within the FCC.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, during a March 18 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, said: “I am against slick lawyers coming in and taking advantage of a program that was designed for a specific audience and a specific purpose.”
He continued: “We are going to fix this. These are rules that have been in place since the Bush administration. We are going to issue a new public notice on this to make sure that this specific issue is teed up. And we are going to make sure that this, that designated entities, have the opportunity to participate and not to have designated entities as beards for people who shouldn’t.”
FCC Commissioner Anit Pai, often a critic of Wheeler, called the entire situation a “rip off,” calling this type of small business legislation “a playpen for corporate giants.”
In a moment of levity, Wheeler said, “We could make news. Commissioner Pai and I are going to agree.”
