Verizon Challenge to T-Mobile 600 GHz Lease Dismissed
Verizon and AT&T, concerned about T-Mobile's 600 MHz leasing arrangements with Channel 51 and LB license companies, haven't shown any actual competitive harm that will come from it, the FCC Wireless Bureau ordered Thursday, dismissing a Verizon petition for reconsideration…
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of its acceptance of spectrum manager lease applications. It said it also dismissed various other requests to revisit FCC spectrum holdings policies, emphasizing that its spectrum screen, used to evaluate the competitive effects of spectrum aggregation in secondary market transactions, isn't a hard cap on a company's spectrum holdings but rather a threshold for deeper competitive analysis. "The FCC has a spectrum screen to help identify instances of potential competitive harm as a provider adds spectrum," Verizon emailed. "Even in this order, the FCC still has not performed a meaningful competitive analysis, even as the leases here put T-Mobile far above the screen. Indeed, TMO already exceeded the screen in many markets before considering the leased spectrum and currently holds more low and mid-band spectrum than the next two carriers combined."