Small Carriers Need Better DE Rules To Have a Chance in Incentive Auction, Co-ops Tell FCC
The FCC’s designated entity rules need to be revised before the TV incentive auction to ensure that small carriers at least have a shot at winning licenses, Panhandle Telephone Cooperative and Pine Belt Telephone Company said in a filing at…
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the FCC. The small carriers told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel they are interested in buying 600 MHz licenses during the auction, but noted that the track record for small carriers was “dismal” in the recently completed AWS-3 auction. “Of the 70 qualified bidders in the auction, over half (38 or 54.3 percent) were rural telcos or rural telco affiliates, yet only 28.9 percent of the rural entities were successful in winning any licenses. Many rural bidders were completely shut out, and those that were successful won only 25 of 1,611 licenses (1.55 percent).” Despite some larger companies' use of “shell” companies as DEs to buy spectrum with bidding credits, fewer than half the successful rural telco bidders in the AWS-3 were able to qualify under DE rules as small businesses, the two carriers said. The filing was posted by the FCC Friday in docket 10-208.