T-Mobile fired back at a Phoenix Center paper...
T-Mobile fired back at a Phoenix Center paper from May, which said the FCC should ignore a Department of Justice filing (http://bit.ly/16S6zag) on spectrum aggregation and competition, as the agency develops rules for an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum…
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(CD May 14 p11). “The Phoenix Report model ... rules out the realistic possibility, highlighted by DOJ, that larger firms could protect prices from eroding by foreclosing smaller firms from access to new spectrum,” T-Mobile said in a paper filed at the FCC (http://bit.ly/1aWh013) by American University law professor Jonathan Baker. “By effectively ignoring the substantial competitive threat that smaller firms could pose, the Phoenix Report also fails to account for the benefits to consumers that would be lost if large incumbents foreclosed smaller ones from access to additional spectrum, through an unreasonable assumption relating production efficiency to market share.” T-Mobile said the Phoenix Center report’s second conclusion “that incremental spectrum should be awarded to the largest firms -- flows from the same suspect claim that competition offers no consumer benefits, after adding another suspect assumption: that smaller firms cannot lower costs or improve service quality as much as larger firms through a given spectrum block acquisition.” Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford is “flattered that T-Mobile believed it necessary to hire an expert witness and a major law firm to respond to a paper and blog that were simply posted on our webpage and never filed with the commission,” he said Tuesday. “Clearly, our work is being read and influencing policy.” The T-Mobile paper was filed at the FCC by Mintz Levin.