WASHINGTON-The Personal Communications Industry Association continued its fight last week to
keep the spectrum cap in place. The spectrum cap limits carriers to 45 megahertz in a given geographic area.
In
reply comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, PCIA said personal communications services
carriers have “minimal market share in the vast majority of the top 200 markets.” To back up this claim,
PCIA submitted a study by HAI Consulting Inc. using data from Telecompetition Inc., which gave the following
statistics:
In almost 50 percent of the top 200 metropolitan statistical areas, PCS carriers have little or no
customers;
In 53 percent of the top 200 markets, all PCS carriers combined have 10 percent or less of the market
share;
PCS carriers serve 15 percent or less of two-way voice subscribers in 82 percent of the markets and 20
percent or less of subscribers in 96 percent of the top markets;
PCS providers’ combined subscribership share
exceeds 20 percent in only 3 percent of the top 200 MSAs;
In no MSA does the combined PCS carrier subscriber
share exceed 25 percent; and
On average, PCS carriers hold a 7.6-percent market share in the top 200 MSAs.
In
November, the FCC began to review the spectrum cap spurred in part by a forbearance petition from the Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association. Congress established procedures in the Telecommunications Act of 1996
that allow entities to ask the FCC to “forebear” from enforcing rules that have become moot because of
competition. CTIA claims that with multiple carriers in many markets, competition has arrived.
