spectrum auctions concert tree objected that doing so could drastically the met small businesses abilities to bring new competition to entrenched incumbents in larger markets is where the majority of consumers live commission in the past decade or so has found that these inferential comments now have taken a ninety eight percent share of the market and all that run into extinction the regional carriers that was recently as two thousand and three served a third of the population pointed out that congress e the commission to seek to avoid that consequence i would licenses to small businesses as a means of ability but i sense concentration on promoting competition license concentration isn't that a  who are you talking about licensed concentration in various markets and how that may affect competition i think what we're talking about i think we're talking about both i think you know the commission might have some leeway on how to interpret the sta have investors and it just so happens are able to provide enough money to bring competition to the incumbents in the markets that they care about and then there's no finding that those kinds of ease prose a special rest of this kind of in your words i think a bit of a line drawing exercise in drawing the line the commission just auction the sixty six in to right so you're your attack is not upon the use of the actions and so almost rather the degree to which the commission explained and developed its use the threat  that one of the reasons they're modified some other officers is that they thought that the rules under which option ninety seven were conducted work insufficiently supportive of these bring in competition to the market but more importantly again they didn't ask the question cost an excess of five hundred million dollars and that's just for one city in one license in one city and so be it we made the argument that the effect of the council it's to provide competition to folks in places like philadelphia mississippi but to put the competitive benefits of the program for consumers in philadelphia pennsylvania off the table and out of reach in the commission had an obligation to tell us if it thought that that was wrong as a pencil matter and it didn't cap was justified in the record of this proceeding but then counsel trieste position is that there is no cap could be justified even though there's no statutory here's what i thought i heard the first time there's there's no such but that's in the but i think the one thing that the commission was the overall attempting to address in this order was the integrity of the options that is the integrity of of maintaining a bidding credit for small businesses we were for the time doesn't it he's but these are small businesses and the commission was was concerned with ensuring that that that these credits went to businesses  were commensurate with the concept of small business and secondly was concerned with the integrity of the auction generally and limiting be incentives of you know if willing to teach to as it said game the system to to create circumstances where they could participate in the option of paying these credits even though they might be eligible and commission head could reason for concern because an option ninety seven b the largest may or may not have been it was certainly within commissions rules and that option in the sense that there was no cap but the commission was concerned that this was risking the integrity of the options and of the bidding credit program general constat that concern me  good one but what were in the record other than the commissions seemed so and demonstrates that caps would prevent the problem it is and the rest may actually prevent the use that question one is the commission's q was that the bidding crit chaotic would limit the incentive as i said earlier for larger entities to attempt to game the system and to obtain these credits concentration in this market the big credit is attended is intended as a statute says to provide small businesses with the opportunity to participate in auctions that's what's clear from the story is the commission believed there was that there was a limited ability for the for the designated entity bidding credit to have an impact on competition in the major markets i think that's what the commission was talking about when it said it recognise that these wouldn't the bidding credit but the bidding credit camp would have an impact in the larger markets but the commission also has a number of other tools to address the problems of which which limits national carriers access to bid on only a certain amount of spectrum in markets which gave an opportunity for both small businesses and small businesses to bid on that spectrum so the commission has other ways of addressing the us and a bit the statutory duty the commission has with respect to small businesses is to ensure they have an opportunity to participate and end the options remarkably small percentage of the spectrum that's true and he is you re answer that that's all the statute requires that they would a number of licenses irrespective of how much spectrum that accounts for a i  licenses that they that they can obtain and that they can provide competition even if competition is not in larger markets the council tree is fixated on with larger markets and then only the provision of on is that there's nothing in the statutory cap that prohibits small businesses from competing in larger markets but if your face pick k out they can continue to bid and they have one hundred  fifty million dollars later on non small businesses it's it's an disputable but that might not be enough in the very largest markets but that nevertheless is a is a very significant advantage to there i think i think the answer again i guess i'm repeating myself is that the statute doesn't require the commission to ensure competition in every market it requires the commission to provide cap imposes a limitation on the limitation this is not on their ability to compete the limitation is on the their ability to paid in the very largest markets  says that that they're really apparently his clients are only interested in the twenty five percent level so they could bid up to six hundred million dollars which is still sort of on a first i think the point he was making was that this would  generally there would be more than one license did not challenge the specific either the twenty five million dollars floor or the hundred fifty million dollars cap and the incentive option he didn't challenge it because those specific numbers were not so the government's argument last few minutes has been that the commission determined that the caps were necessary to keep the smash commensurate with their status as a small business we think that that is not a proper interpretation of the statute but more to the point much of the procedural point which represent a new interpretation of the statute by the commission which has for decades encouraged arrived outside investments  of an industry that requires hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a single license it requires hundreds of millions of dollars to build out a network in order to bring real competition to where the people are and so the commission has a long history of saying no we're not going to define who is a small business based on the amount of investment they're able to bring in the amount of competition they're able to bring but instead by their gross revenues and we're going to protect against better trying to tease and it was front by making sure that they are trying to do some exercise control over the spectrum of the business of the t v and the commission still has those in place and so we're in this odd position where caps any imply attempted to use that the commission has determined to be bonafide easterby small businesses within the meaning of the statute and nonetheless they are there making this argument that they're necessary in order to make sure that these these are somehow still small businesses in the commission has determined not necessarily take everything he did that would prevent us to see the i mean you know this the spectrum prices for mid size cities and run you know ninety one hundred million dollars and so they are the fact of the caps they support some very big single licenses out of reach and to put a larger number of regional potential is small business would have the opportunity to grow to make profits to expand and we were talking about the allocation of public subsidies and that's exactly how the commission wants it to work to create competition and to avoid license concentration of the sort that congress was concerned about in the specifics after and that's why for example yes media itself followed the comments in this proceeding opposing the ca