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T-Mobile offered counterarguments to a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy study which said if Verizon Wireless and AT&T were barred from bidding in the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, auction revenue could be 40 percent lower than if they are allowed to bid (CD May 1 p12). The authors of the study “erect a strawman in which the Commission would entirely exclude AT&T and Verizon from the auction and, from this faulty premise, assert that auction revenues would be reduced by pro-competitive spectrum aggregation limits,” T-Mobile said Monday in a letter to the FCC. “In fact, no party has proposed to exclude AT&T and Verizon from the incentive auction.” T-Mobile said three of the authors of the study have done work in the past for AT&T. “Permitting the two dominant players to acquire all of the available 600 MHz spectrum would undermine the goal of limited government and, in particular, the successful model of the last 15+ years under which the wireless industry was allowed to operate on the basis of competition rather than intrusive regulation. Excessive concentration in spectrum resources, especially the critical lower-frequency spectrum, will entrench market power and diminish competitive pressure in the wireless industry, which, in turn, will lead to calls for undesirable government intervention over the terms and conditions of wireless service offerings,” T-Mobile said.

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