Opinion ID: 604767
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Text of the Order

Text: 40 Reading through the text of the Second Report and Order, we find numerous statements from which an attentive reader could and likely would infer that, once the expansion periods had ended, those who wanted to serve unserved areas would be free to file applications for them. The Commission started its discussion by reaffirming its policy that incumbents' unchallenged cellular applications must be filed by a date certain set by the Commission.... Second Report and Order, 2 F.C.C.Rcd. at 2307 (emphasis added). It announced that it was setting a five-year expansion period for incumbents and that [a] date certain filing date will thus be established for each MSA market. Id. Then, after recounting comments it had received, id. at 2307-08, and stating that it was providing that licensees/permittees will have five years from the date of the first construction permit to file unchallenged applications, the Commission made this critical statement: After five years from such a date, parties desiring to serve unserved areas beyond the CGSA but within the MSA may file fill-in applications for an MSA. Id. at 2308 (emphasis added). 41 We find absolutely nothing in the text of the order to alert petitioners to the possibility that this plain statement that those desiring to serve unserved areas may file after the five-year expansion period expired did not authorize them to file their applications after that date. To the contrary, petitioners had every reason to read the announcement of the five-year safe harbor for incumbents as an authorization to file thereafter, based both on the text of the order and on the Commission's prior announcement that after the initial application phase [which became the five-year expansion period], we will reopen any unapplied for areas to any applicant under regular notice and cut-off rules.... Cellular Lottery Rulemaking, 98 F.C.C.2d 175, 204 n. 81 (1984). The Commission's then-existing regular notice and cut-off rules provided that the deadline for accepting mutually exclusive fill-in applications, as they were known at the time, was sixty days after the date of the public notice listing the first of the conflicting applications as accepted for filing (or thirty days after the public notice and one day before the Commission acts on the first application, whichever is earlier). 47 C.F.R. § 22.31(b)(2)(i) and (ii). 42 When the Commission adopted § 22.31(a)(1)(i), providing for the exclusive expansion period, as part of the Second Report and Order, it left intact the remainder of § 22.31, including the notice and cut-off procedures. Thus, the most logical way to read the change is as a discrete exception to or modification of the existing and continuing fill-in procedures. This would mean that, once the five-year moratorium elapsed, the established notice and cut-off procedures would operate. Since the order provided that persons wishing to serve unserved areas may file after the expansion period ended, without clearly mandating or foretelling any specific procedures for filing, the natural conclusion, which is the one petitioners reached, is that they were to file under the Commission's established procedures. 43 We cannot conclude that the clear impression conveyed by the order that applicants could file at the end of the five-year periods is undermined by either of the two provisions of the text that the Commission invokes to counteract that reading. The Commission points first to the statement that this is not the time to establish the process for selecting the fill-in applications. Second Report and Order, 2 F.C.C.Rcd. at 2309. Quite clearly, this statement refers only to selecting among the applications, not accepting them for [301 U.S.App.D.C. 91] filing. 8 Since the Commission frequently accepts and retains applications while deciding on the means for selecting licensees, see, e.g., Cellular Lottery Rulemaking, 98 F.C.C.2d 175 (1984); Amendment of the Commission's Rules to Allow Random Selection or Lotteries, 93 F.C.C.2d 952 (1983); Amendment of Part 90 of the Commission's Rules, 7 F.C.C.Rcd. 4484 (1992), this reservation by itself could not have alerted petitioners that their filings would be premature. 44 Second, the Commission argues that the future tense statement that dates certain will be set at five years signals that they are not actually being set in the order. In the same order, however, the Commission clearly and unambiguously declared that other dates certain would be set in the future: [W]e are reserving our right to set future dates certain for the filing of fill-in applications in RSAs [Rural Service Areas], Second Report and Order, 2 F.C.C.Rcd. at 2308 (emphasis added). Thus, the Commission obviously knew how to convey with clarity that it was postponing a decision or an announcement until some unspecified future date. By contrast, we are unable to conclude that its statement that a date certain will be set at five years after the date of the first construction permit granted in each MSA filing dates, id., could reasonably tip off a reader that this date certain, which the Commission has already fixed at five years from the first permit date, will nonetheless not be set until the Commission compiles and publishes a comprehensive list of dates certain for all MSAs.