Hightower Lowdown

It is an Aesop fable that
gives us the phrase “the
lion’s share,” which has
come to mean the biggest
portion of something.
However, in the fable, the
lion didn’t merely take the
biggest share of the stag
that it and three other animals
had hunted down—it
took the whole prize.
Today, giant telecom firms
are absolutely Aesopian in
their lust for total control of
the phone business. In the
cellphone sector, for
instance, a handful of giants
are dominant simply because
they have the raw money
power to outbid smaller competitors
for the airwave
licenses needed to operate.
To prevent AT&T, Cingular,
Sprint, and other big players
from cornering the market,
the Federal Communications
Commission set aside 422 of
these licenses in 195 localities
across the country,
allowing only small companies
to bid on them. It was a
good way to maintain competition
in the industry—but
the anti-competitive giants
got sneaky. They formed
“partnerships” with small
companies, giving them the
money to win the licenses.
Alaska Native Wireless,
for example, is a small outfit
that, amazingly, won 44 of
these licenses, including a
$1.5 billion license to operate
in New York City. Where
does a little outfit like Alaska
Native get billions of dollars?
From its “partner,” AT&T.
Of the 422 licenses that
were supposed to go to
small competitors, 95%
went to front companies for
AT&T, Sprint, Cingular and
other giants. Worst of all,
these giants used their
fronts to qualify for smallbusiness
credits to pay for
the licenses, costing taxpayers
$626 million.