Below is text from one section of Douglas Galbi’s paper, “Revolutionary Ideas for Radio Regulation.”  For other sections, see www.galbithink.org or www.ssrn.com

 

Appendix A

Extended Notes to Tables

 

 

Table 3

 

License totals for services other than broadcast services were tabulated from licenses with “active” status in FCC ULS data in April, 2002.  Current ULS data are available at

http://wireless.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/wtb-datadump.pl

 

Radio service codes were grouped according to headings given in the FCC list of radio services.  See http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/radioservices.html 

 

In Table 3, the land (mobile) category combines:

Cellular (CL)

GMRS - General Mobile Radio Services (ZA)

Land Mobile Commercial (LC)

Land Mobile Private (LP)

Paging (PG)

Personal Communication Services - PCS (PC)

The land (fixed) category combines:

Coast and Ground (CG)

Microwave (MW)

The other categories in Table 3 map directly to associated headings in the radio services list.

 

Broadcast station totals are from FCC News Release, “Broadcast Station Totals as of September 30, 2001,” (rel. Oct. 30, 2001); online at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/News_Releases/2001/nrmm0112.pdf

The “broadcast (FM radio)” category combines:

FM commercial and educational (8275 stations)

FM Translators and Boosters (3600 stations)

The “broadcast (television)” category combines:

UHF and VHF commercial and educational TV stations (1686 stations)

UHF and VHF translators (4762 stations)                      

Class A TV stations (424 stations)

Low Power TV stations (2212 stations)

 

The term of non-broadcast licenses was calculated as the average time period between the grant date and the expired date in the data record for the license (table HD in ULS).  Records lacking entries for either of these dates were omitted in calculated the average license term.

 

47 U.S.C. 307(c)(1) states that a license for a broadcast station “shall be for a term of not to exceed 8 years.”  This figure was used for the term of broadcast licenses.        

 

 

Table 4

 

Monthly lists of FCC Field Office actions are available at http://www.fcc.gov/eb/rfo/actions.html

 

Field actions were categorized based on the second-level rule heading under which actions are listed.  Notices of Violations under part 11 and part 17 headings comprise the  emergency alert system and antenna rules categories, respectively.  The cable system standards category is Notices under 47 C.F.R. § 76.605.  The protocol and procedures category includes violations in these areas: station identification, station logs, inspection files and license information, and procedure in filing applications and responding to FCC notices.    Free-to-air radio signal rules are all other notices.  The two largest groups in this category are Notices under “47 C.F.R. § 1.903 – Authorization Required” (28 Notices) and “'47 C.F.R. § 90.403 – General Operating Requirements” (18 Notices).

 

Some stations are cited for multiple rule violations.  The pattern of citations among multiple rule violations is similar to that for the primary headings.

 

Table 5

 

U.S. states are a partition of U.S. counties.  All geographies used thus far in FCC auctions are also partitions of counties.  In Table 5, net bids for auctioned areas have been re-allocated, on a relative population basis, to the counties that make up the area.  These county values were then summed across auctions for state totals.  Table A1 shows the auctions included in the figures in Table 5, as well as other information related to the individual auctions.  All offerings at auction of a nation-wide partition of spectrum, with auctioned areas about the size of states or smaller, are included in Table A1.

 

Table A1

Auctions Included in Table 5

 

Auction

Auction Name

Geography

Geographic Areas

Licenses per Area

Net Bids

Notes

4

PCS A,B broadband

MTA

51

2

8,149,470,541

1

5

PCS C broadband

BTA

493

1

10,069,802,341

2

6

MMDS

BTA

493

1

215,925,477

 

7

SMR

MTA

51

20

204,143,678

 

11

PCS D,E,F

BTA

493

3

2,516,367,759

 

14

WCS

MEA

51

2

9,105,213

3

16

SMR upper

EA

175

3

95,380,410

 

17

LMDS

BTA

493

2

578,467,404

 

21

LMS

EA

175

3

3,431,404

 

26

Paging

MEA

51

49

4,101,795

 

30

39 Ghz

EA

175

14

410,589,490

 

33

Upper 700 Guard Band

MEA

51

2

519,839,250

 

34

SMR

EA

175

6

318,730,110

4

36

SMR lower

EA

175

16

28,950,740

 

40

Paging lower

EA

175

80

12,696,887

5

41

PCS narrowband

MTA

51

7

3,646,286

6

42

Mult Address Systems

EA

175

29

1,180,975

 

 

 

Notes from last column of Table A1:

 

1. “A” block licenses for Washington, DC; New York; and LA/San Diego were award as pioneer preferences prior to the auction.  Net bid values for the first two areas were imputed based on the A/B block net bid ratio for Boston-Providence.  The net bid value for LA/San Diego was imputed based on the A/B net bid ratio for San Francisco.

 

2. Winning bidders defaulted on $874 million in net bids.  The figure used is net bids, not excluding defaults.

 

3. Bids associated with 12 regional economic groups, a coarse partition, were not included.

 

4. Licenses offered in the 800 MHz Upper Band (861-865 MHz) were not included (in particular, a license for Honolulu).

 

5. Licenses unsold in Auction No. 26 (1514 upper band paging licenses) were not included.  That allows, for particularly frequencies, the net figures used to represent a simultaneous geographic division of value.

 

6. Bids for eight nation-wide licenses were not included (too coarse of a partition).

 

Additional notes:

 

1. Areas defined for American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and the Gulf of Mexico were excluded because they were not consistently auctioned, or population and area data were not available. 

 

2. The Table is not strictly a list of states: it includes Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, which are not U.S. states. 

 

3.  For the definition of auction geographies (MEA, EA, etc.), see the main text, Section III D. 

 

4. For a summary of FCC auctions, see http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/summary.html#completed

 

Sources:  For FCC auction data, see http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/data/roundresults.html

A county cross-reference database for the auction geographies is available at http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/data/maps.html#pops.  That dataset also provides county population and area figures.  The figures in Table 5 were calculated using the 1990 revised population figures. 

 

 

Table 8

 

The figures for amateur radio users are from reports from national amateur radio societies to the International Amateur Radio Union.   The figures are for “total operators” for the year 2000.  See http://www.iaru.rog/statsum00.html

 

The figures for mobile telephony users and Internet users are from the ITU, year 2001 figures.  See  http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/  For information about the quality of Internet access statistics, see Michael Mingers, “Counting the Net: Internet Access Indicators,” ITU, online at http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/inet/00/cdproceedings/8e/8e_1.htm

 

Population figures, which are for the year 2000, are from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database.  See http://devdata.worldbank.org/data-query/

 

The sample consists of 164 countries and economies for which all the above data are available.  For a full list of the individual countries and economies, along with income category, region, and users per thousand, see Appendix C.