Opinion ID: 524251
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Compatibility with Congressional Purposes.

Text: 67 In enacting the Satellite Act, Congress was quite forthright in promoting development of the then-nascent satellite telecommunications industry. Section 102 of the Act well expresses Congress's overriding goals: improved global communications responsive to public need, 47 U.S.C. Sec. 701(a), promotion of new and expanded services, id. Sec. 701(b), and the injection of maximum competition with the widest possible participation by private enterprise, id. Sec. 701(c). See also id. Sec. 721(c)(1) (FCC shall insure effective competition). Similar considerations are evident in Congress's decision to permit the carriers, along with Comsat, to own earth stations. Expressed most often were three fundamental aims: enhanced system-wide coordination, improved competition, and maximized FCC flexibility in questions of ownership. Congress believed that allowing the carriers to share in the ownership of earth stations would advance these objectives. 16 See S.Rep. No. 1584, supra, at 12-13, 1962 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 2274 (the FCC will take into account all relevant technological, economic, operating, and policy factors ... which are related to public interest ... in making its determination as to whom it will authorize to operate the ground stations). Cf. 47 U.S.C. Sec. 157 (It shall be the policy of the United States to encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public.). We cannot conclude that the injection of non-carrier ownership does violence to any of these congressional aims. 68 There is no doubting that Congress contemplated that these broad objectives would be carried out by the corporation and the common carriers. But the Declaratory Order noted, as have we, that [t]here is no indication that Congress conceived of the private, non-common carrier, transmit/receive earth stations under consideration here. Declaratory Order, 3 FCC Rcd at 1587 para. 17. It further observed that Congress likewise was unable to conceive of direct-to-user transmissions, or that earth stations might be small and inexpensive enough for use on customer premises. Id. at 1588. The Commission believed these considerations were crucial in determining the inapplicability of Section 201(c)(7). We cannot call this unreasonable. 69 In discerning the compatibility of the FCC's interpretation with congressional purposes, it is important to note that when, in 1962, Congress was considering the Satellite Act, there existed in the United States two operational earth stations, one owned by AT & T and another owned by IT & T. 17 Congress was advised that such earth stations could only be constructed at costs of as much as four to six million dollars. See Communications Satellite Legislation: Hearings on S. 2650 and S. 2814 Before the Comm. on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 301 (1962) (statement of Henri G. Busignies of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.) (four to six million for high capacity earth stations; one to two million for hypothesized low capacity stations); id. at 66 (statement of Morton J. Stoller of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration) (completed earth station costs run over 5 million). We believe that deference is particularly apt in the present case, where the relative infancy of the satellite industry, together with the discretion vested by Congress in the Commission to grant licenses when warranted by public interest, convenience, and necessity, 47 U.S.C. Sec. 307, evidence a congressional delegation of interpretive authority to the FCC. See generally Note, Coring the Seedless Grape: A Reinterpretation of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, 87 Colum.L.Rev. 986, 998 (1987) (discussing factors to be considered in determining whether Congress has vested policymaking authority in agency). 70 Petitioners contend that the FCC's technology theory is belied by the legislative history's reference to mobile stations, which, petitioners correctly observe, did not exist in 1962. Joint Brief of Petitioners at 25. See S.Rep. No. 1584, supra, at 14, 1962 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 2275. We are unmoved. A representative of IT & T specifically informed Congress that it was presently developing and constructing two mobile ground stations. Communications Satellite Legislation: Hearings on S. 2650 and S. 2814 Before the Comm. on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 289 (1962) (statement of Henri G. Busignies of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.). Thus, Congress was aware of this emerging technology in 1962. The same cannot be said of the type of stations involved in the present case. 71