Tell that to CTIA, which claims the FCC overcharged its members for regulatory fees to the tune of $8 million.
Tell that to comm site owners on Bureau of Land Management property, whose rental bills are skyrocketing. BLM says it’s really about the Desert Tortoise, the Mojave Ground Squirrel and other endangered species that need protecting.
The tortoise and other factors are driving BLM to trade income-producing land (with comm sites at Mount Emma, Quartzite Mountain, etc.) for barren land owned by Catellus Development Corp., a unit of Southern Pacific Railroad. Are congressional appropriators okay (aware?) with this?
Some critics (those affected by BLM reassessments) believe the gargantuan rental hike is BLM’s way of enhancing land value so it can get more in return from Catellus. BLM officials say the land-swap deals do not signal a policy shift away from the comm site business and that taxpayers are not being shortchanged because the value of comm sites are factored into the equation.
On the other hand, maybe all you dispatch, paging and mobile phone folks should be worried if you operate on BLM land.
… Tell the thousands of rural cellular aspirants, whose applications were purged and whose $200 filing fees were confiscated by the FCC, it’s not about the money.
The telecom bureau on April 2 said it had no choice but to boot cellular apps for six rural markets because the 1997 budget act-which the FCC lobbied for in order to expand its auction authority-required it.
The original ’93 auction law gave the FCC the option of using competitive bidding or lotteries for handling applications filed before July 26, 1993. The RSA cellular apps at issue were submitted in 1988. Under FCC rules snuffed out by the ’97 act, a second lottery was held if the winner in the first lottery was disqualified. That’s the situation with the six RSAs in dispute. The FCC had legal standing and ample time to re-lottery the RSA apps and was set to do just that on Sept. 18, 1996. But Cellular Communications of Puerto Rico intervened a few weeks before the would-be lottery and implored the FCC to auction the six cellular RSAs rather than lottery them.
What was CCPR’s interest? One of the six RSAs up for lottery was Ceiba, Puerto Rico. Who represented CCPR then? Sara Seidman, former special counsel to then-FCC general counsel and now-FCC Chairman Bill Kennard. Seidman wouldn’t say if CCPR intends to bid on the Ceiba RSA in the future.
At the time of CCPR’s entreaty (the Budget Deficit Age), the FCC was headed by auction hawk Reed Hundt. The lottery for the six RSAs subsequently was postponed, while the FCC sought public comment on CCPR’s request and lobbied Congress for broader auction powers that ultimately would make the RSA lottery-or-auction question moot.
The punch line of the story is WTB kept an estimated half-million dollars in filing fees of RSA applicants. Its reasoning: The applicants had a crack at the lottery and lost. Never mind that the results of that lottery-as it relates to the six RSAs-effectively were voided by the disqualification of the winners or that thousands of applicants were denied the chance to win a license in a second lottery. Never mind that, at times, it sure as heck looks like it’s about the money.
