Talk is cheap.
Take the Federal Communications Commission’s grandiose pronouncements over the past two years on behalf of women, minorities and small businesses.
Most disappointing recently is the agency’s refusal to delay the Aug. 26 auction of PCS blocks D, E & F to give small businesses time to restructure financing in light of tighter financial requirements on applicants.
What’s the big deal about holding off a month or so?
Everyone knows there was nothing small about the businesses that dominated the C-block auction unless you consider Korea a small business.
What’s worse is what FCC staffers are telling small business advocates who’ve been lobbying regulators to cut ’em some slack. There will be other auctions, they say. Maybe so.
But D, E, & F PCS blocks are the best and last chance for true small businesses, including those owned by women and minorities, in PCS.
Absurd as it is, the reason the FCC made D-, E- & F-block financial rules stricter is because BDPCS Inc. and National Telecom failed to come up with down payments.
That U S West, the firm that employs small business champion Saul Trujillo, pulled its financing from BDPCS matters little. Everyone must suffer.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt promised to champion the cause of disadvantaged individuals. Early on, he made good on that pledge.
And the results, manifested in a diversity of licensees who paid top dollar for regional narrowband PCS permits, proved that social and fiscal goals need not be mutually exclusive.
But, of course, it was politically correct to do so after the 103rd Democratic-led Congress passed auction legislation in 1993 that directed the FCC to make opportunities available in wireless for women, minorities, small businesses and rural telephone companies.
The problem is Hundt and his colleagues lost their resolve soon after Republicans took over Congress and vowed to end affirmative action.
The agency wasted little time after the Adarand decision last summer in disposing of female and minority bidding credits in the C-block auction. Politically, that was forgivable. But the fact that the agency has yet to conduct a study to document the rather bland makeup of the telecommunications industry is inexcusable.
With the GOP leadership giving up on anti-affirmative action legislation this year, it’s possible that bidding preferences could have been reinstituted had such a study been completed.
The agency crafted a rather liberal definition of small business for the C-block auction. But, hey, how can you argue with the results: $10.2 billion.
Nothing cheap about that.
