Several carriers filed reply comments Friday about proposed competitive bidding...
Several carriers filed reply comments Friday about proposed competitive bidding procedures for Auction 901, which will disburse $300 million in the upcoming Mobility Fund. The FCC’s proposal to allow bidders to submit package bids on bidder-defined census block aggregations “increases…
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the complexity of the auction greatly and introduces additional problems,” AT&T said, echoing a group of academic experts on auctions. The Universal Service Fund/Intercarrier Compensation order determined that support should be provided on a census block basis, and a subsequent public notice proposed that individual bidders submit up to three package bids per Cellular Market Area based on those aggregations. The problem is that combinatorial auctions make it more difficult to determine winners, and could in fact make it impossible “due to issues of computational complexity,” said AT&T, quoting comments made by the professors. A combinatorial auction will also create “significant opportunities for strategic manipulation of the auction,” and introduce the possibility of overlapping bids, which would only exacerbate things, AT&T said. U.S. Cellular said the requirement for a letter of credit is “burdensome and unnecessary,” and would “impede investment in mobile broadband infrastructure.” U.S. Cellular also said the Commission should delay the auction pending the result of litigation challenging the source of the $300 million in funding. The Rural Telecommunications Group said the proposed American Roamer data and road categories are insufficient to determine and measure eligible areas, because the data could be inaccurate.