Op-ed authors rebut Hundt’s Frontline letter

Dear Editor,
We would like to respond to some of the many misleading comments made by Reed Hundt in RCR Wireless News relating to our editorial. That piece argued that the FCC should not play favorites in auctioning spectrum, and that Congress should change the law to limit the FCC’s discretion to do so. We thought it was a good idea then, and we still do now.
Hundt makes several criticisms of our piece, most in the form of questioning our motives or claims that we made factual errors. He is wrong on most, if not all, counts.
First, Hundt asserts that “Frontline wants the winner to be obligated to sell to anyone, including end users, device makers and local and regional companies trying to compete against Verizon. It is Verizon who wants the winner to be ordered to sell to end users.” This position is 180 degrees opposite of what Frontline and its economists have stated in the FCC record. In particular, Frontline’s proposed service rules, which were submitted to the FCC on May 23, read as follows:
The E Block licensee shall be limited to providing service to public-safety users, entities that provide retail service and products to end users, and providers and operators of critical infrastructure as defined in Section 2(4) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (incorporating the definition in 42 U.S.C.