Federal Communications Commission "FCC XX-XXX" STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER BRENDAN CARR Re: Auction of Toll Free Numbers in the 833 Code; Comment Sought on Competitive Bidding Procedures, AU Docket No. 19-101, WC Docket No. 17-192, CC Docket No. 95-155. We have more ways to communicate than ever before—from messaging apps, to social media, to email. But with all these new forms of communication, it’s an innovation from the 1960s—toll-free calling—that continues to play a key role in our interactions. In fact, there are more than 40 million toll-free numbers in use today, which represents a 40 percent increase over the past decade. There’s so much value in these numbers that we voted last year to experiment with the first-ever auction of toll-free numbers and to allow those numbers to be transferred on the secondary market. This could be a much more equitable and efficient way of distributing numbers than the first-come, first-served approach of the past. But as today’s Notice recognizes, there’s still a lot we don’t know. How many bidders will show up for this first auction? How much activity will we see in the secondary market? We don’t have all the answers, so we’re starting small with this experiment. And we put rules in place to track the results. The information we gather can be used to inform future auctions. So I want to thank the Office of Economics and Analytics as well as the team in the Wireline Competition Bureau for your work on these auction procedures. The Notice has my support. 2