The FCC should reject AT&T’s proposals on how the agency...
The FCC should reject AT&T’s proposals on how the agency should handle renewal applications by Wireless Communications Service licensees, Green Flag Wireless said in a letter to the commission. Those proposals were laid out by AT&T in an ex parte…
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filing last month (http://xrl.us/bnjm2z). “The thrust of AT&T’s presentation to the Commission’s staff seems to have been an effort to circumvent both the existing rules adopted by the Commission to handle precisely the situation that has arisen and the sixty-odd years of precedent establishing that incumbents may not simply be granted a renewal in the absence of substantial service,” Green Flag said (http://xrl.us/bnjm3w). “AT&T adopts an attitude of prima facie entitlement to the WCS spectrum and invites the Commission to join with it in devising a scheme to eliminate the irksome complication of competing applications. ... The right to equal treatment is not merely a legal nicety that must be given grudging obeisance. AT&T did absolutely nothing with these licenses during the license term. There are no equitable or other considerations that should give a regulator pause in stripping a do-nothing incumbent of its license.” AT&T’s proposals are “both contrary to law and contrary to the public interest,” Green Flag said. “Rather than clarifying the current situation, the proposal would muddy the waters further, overturn a half century of settled law on renewal expectancies, and set a dangerous precedent in support of spectrum warehousing."