DE Bidding Credit Caps Would Be Anticompetitive, U.S. Cellular Says
Alleged abuses of the designated entity (DE) program in the AWS-3 auction shouldn't be used as an excuse to gut the program, U.S. Cellular officials said in a meeting with Brendan Carr, aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai. Some concerns about…
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that auction, Auction 97, have little to do with the DE program itself, U.S. Cellular said. “In addition to being far lower in dollar amounts than the Auction 97 bidding credits alleged to be abusive, the unreasonably low caps proposed by some commenters would effectively prevent DEs from competing for spectrum in heavily-populated markets,” the carrier said. “Even if a DE is not focused on the largest markets, the proposed caps would significantly restrict the number of licenses it could acquire.” A proposal by AT&T and rural carriers would cap bidding credits at $10 million per bidder, U.S. Cellular noted (see 1505110048). In the AWS-3 auction, licenses covering “even many mid-sized markets” individually sold for more than $40 million, the carrier said. “The proposed caps would prevent a DE from operating with sufficient scale to sustain itself in the industry, let alone become a viable competitive threat to the currently dominant carriers. We also explained that a bidding credit cap very well could prevent DEs from acquiring even a limited number of small-market licenses because such a cap would make it very difficult to obtain any level of financing.” The filing was posted Tuesday in docket 14-170.