T-Mobile disputed many of the arguments in a...

made a counter filing. “Professor Marx first asserts that AT&T and Verizon are unlikely to foreclose smaller carriers from the 600 MHz auction,” T-Mobile said. “She claims there is a highly liquid market for low-frequency spectrum, identifies a number of low-frequency spectrum transactions, and professes surprise that neither Sprint nor T-Mobile have pursued secondary market transactions to acquire spectrum. In fact, the secondary market for low-frequency spectrum is highly illiquid and fragmented.” T-Mobile countered Marx’s reliance “on the unstated but incorrect assumption that low-frequency spectrum is valuable only to expand network capacity.” “The greatest value of low-frequency spectrum, though, is not to expand network capacity, but rather to enhance network coverage indoors and out,” T-Mobile said. “No commenter in this proceeding, other than Verizon and AT&T, has argued that non-dominant carriers want to acquire 600 MHz spectrum to increase capacity. Whether Sprint and T-Mobile are capacity constrained is thus irrelevant to their potential to be foreclosed.” The FCC will impose restrictions on who can bid in the incentive auction, predicted Anant Raut, a former FTC attorney and antitrust counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1gqTBse). “Some commentators have looked to Chairman-elect [Tom] Wheeler’s comments as the head of a trade association in the private sector for clues as to whether he will let AT&T and Verizon bid on all of the available spectrum,” Raut wrote. “Bad sleuthing. ... Once confirmed, Chairman Wheeler will be representing the Administration, and the Administration has already spoken, to an extent, through another Executive Branch filing -- the DOJ’s comments calling for an allocated spectrum auction. Look for the Commission to decide by a partisan 3-2 vote to set aside certain blocks of spectrum” for competitors to AT&T and Verizon.