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 STATEMENT  OF  COMMISSIONER  MICHAEL  J.  COPPS 
 Re:  Implementation  of  Section  6002(  b)  of  the  Omnibus  Budget  Reconciliation  Act  of  1993,  Annual  Report  and  Analysis  of  Competitive  Market  Conditions  with  Respect  to 
 Commercial  Mobile  Services,  Notice  of  Inquiry 
 This  is  an  important  Report.  It  is  used  in  our  Commission’s  proceedings  on  general  regulatory  reforms  and  individual  mergers.  The  data  that  we  rely  on  for  this 
 report  is  incomplete,  as  has  been  noted  in  the  Report  itself  for  the  past  several  years.  Given  our  reliance  on  the  Report  and  our  lack  of  data  on  important  issues  such  as  churn, 
 rural  pricing,  and  the  presence  or  absence  of  head-  to-  head  competition,  we  should  strive  to  improve  our  data  gathering.  Rigorous  and  non-  arbitrary  government  decision  making 
 demands  that  we  obtain  a  more  complete  picture  of  the  marketplace  than  we  have.  And  I  should  note  that  this  process  does  not  currently  require  carriers  to  file  any  data.  We  rely 
 on  voluntary  filings  and  our  own  investigation. 
 But  even  if  we  Commissioners  did  not  believe  that  we  need  to  gather  data  each  year,  we  would  still  be  required  to  undertake  this  task  and  to  perform  a  rigorous  analysis 
 of  the  data  we  gather.  That  is  because  Congress  told  us  to  do  so  in  the  Telecommunications  Act.  Congress  did  not  say  to  make  assumptions  about 
 competitiveness  or  to  rely  on  last  year’s  data.  It  compelled  us  to  “review  competitive  market  conditions  with  respect  to  commercial  mobile  services”  and  to  perform  an 
 “analysis  of  those  conditions.”  We  should  not  exchange  our  judgment  of  where  to  place  Commission  resources  for  Congress’s  judgment.  So,  although  there  may  be  changes  to 
 this  item  that  I  would  make,  and  other  data  that  I  would  seek,  I  congratulate  the  staff  for  their  hard  work  in  putting  together  this  NOI  so  that  we  can  fulfill  our  responsibility. 
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