Carrier Spending on Tower Deployment Seen as Possible Boon to Small Firms

Small cells and distributed antenna systems to spread out sites closer to where smartphone and other wireless customers are using the devices mean “more and more local” gear, Adelstein said. “Here’s a place where I can see opportunities for small businesses to form and to grow” because the “huge, national” carriers need new sites for antennas, he said. “If you have a local connection, then that’s a place that you can make that happen.” He asked if “the builders and owners of these networks [should] look like the communities they're serving,” citing higher use of smartphones by some minority groups than among whites. The re-election of President Barack Obama Tuesday to a second term is “good news” to diversity supporters who “don’t have to retrain a new administration” on ways to help people of color and other groups, Adelstein said. Other speakers on the MMTC panel including NAB Deputy General Counsel Erin Dozier and NCTA Executive Vice President James Assey noted their associations have backed a return of tax certificates for communications assets sold to disadvantaged firms.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai sees minority-owned businesses’ ability to expand as an issue of getting funding, he said. MMTC has made that clear to him, Pai said. “Capital really is the lifeblood for a lot of minority-owned companies.” Getting the rules “right” for a voluntary incentive auction of TV stations’ frequencies, and holding it in 2014 as the commission plans (CD Oct 19 p6), would mean that “all Americans, but especially communities of color, will benefit from the wireless broadband revolution,” Pai said. “We have to listen to as many interested parties as possible, and that includes not just the wireless folks and the broadcasters, but communities of color,” he said. “Part of the process is it being fair to all stakeholders” and “keep it as simple as possible,” he said of his hopes for the first-of-its-kind auction. “Hopefully the FCC can promulgate some clear principles that everyone can understand."

Reviving the tax certificate program Congress ended in 1995 amid concerns about abuse could be achieved in a workable way, some panelists said. “Just because an idea is old, doesn’t mean it’s not good,” Assey said of a program he noted the cable industry has supported. “To the extent there’s low hanging fruit, we ought to focus on that” in the short term, he said. MMTC Executive Director David Honig hopes the 113th Congress which convenes in January considers legislation to reinstate the program. “It would have been and still is easy to reform it,” he said. “We are hoping in the new Congress it may be a little more collegial than the last one” and it’s possible the certificates could be “tacked onto” major tax legislation that will be considered, Honig said. The NAB has backed a return of the certificate program and asked the FCC to also recommend Congress act, Dozier said. Adelstein as an FCC commissioner also supported it, he noted. McCormick and CTIA CEO Steve Largent declined to comment on the issue.

AT&T’s plans to boost capital expenditures to about $23 billion annually for the next few years means there’s more money the carrier can spend on buying services, McCormick said. “It’s going to help those suppliers, to have diversity of suppliers.” The “app economy” means an entrepreneur needs only a “really good idea” and not “a lot of money” to “get a seat at the table” for a wireless idea to be considered, Largent said. “The idea of ‘if you build it, they will come,’ is certainly true in the wireless industry.” Seventy-eight percent of “app economy” businesses are small, Largent said.

Adelstein is trying to get PCIA, which hired him in September from heading the federal government’s Rural Utilities Service, to become more diverse. The association’s show last month in Orlando illustrated to him that it “wasn’t really a diverse group” and needs more of “a core” to bring more minority-related issues to the fore of the agenda, Adelstein said. “Hopefully there is a chance there,” he said to applause from MMTC Chairman Julia Johnson. “We will support you, and we will be there to back office any of those support efforts,” she responded.

The incentive auction could mean fewer minority-owned TV stations broadcast afterwards, if many of them sell their spectrum, some panelists and audience members said. The small number of such outlets may be reduced more by an auction, said audience member Cheryl Leanza, a communications lawyer whose clients include the United Church of Christ. “The numbers are near zero,” Honig replied. Perhaps a broadcaster that sells its frequencies but continues programming could get capital gains taxes on its cut of auction proceeds deferred by the government, he said. FCC rules that let stations’ signals reach their current populations after their channels change to repack their frequencies for the auction is important, for the industry and for viewers that don’t subscribe to a pay TV service and are more likely to be minorities, Dozier said.