There is broad industry agreement that the FCC’s...

There is broad industry agreement that the FCC’s spectrum aggregation policies are “flawed,” Sprint representatives said in a meeting with FCC Wireless Bureau staff. “Most notably, the Commission’s current tool -- the ’spectrum screen’ -- for assessing the likelihood of competitive harm arising from a particular spectrum acquisition fails to accurately reflect the critical competitive differences between bands available for mobile broadband,” Sprint said (http://bit.ly/1fn8TM9). “As Sprint explained, these differences significantly affect the ability and cost of a firm to deploy and operate a network using specific frequency bands. These varying costs and feasibility of deployment between bands directly affect the ability of firms to effectively compete in response to another firm’s attempt to exercise market power -- the key inquiry of the Commission’s spectrum screen."