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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 159 / Friday, August 20, 2021 / Proposed Rules revenue of NCE stations that would permit it to determine how many such stations would qualify as small entities.
There are also 2,246 low power television stations, including Class A
stations LPTV, and 3,543 TV translator stations. Given the nature of these services, the Commission will presume that all of these entities qualify as small entities under the above SBA small business size standard.
The Commission notes, however, that in assessing whether a business concern qualifies as small under the above definition, business control affiliations must be included. The Commissions estimate, therefore, likely overstates the number of small entities that might be affected by its action, because the revenue figure on which it is based does not include or aggregate revenues from affiliated companies. In addition, another element of the definition of small business requires that an entity not be dominant in its field of operation.
The Commission is unable at this time to define or quantify the criteria that would establish whether a specific television broadcast station is dominant in its field of operation. Accordingly, the estimate of small businesses to which rules may apply does not exclude any television station from the definition of a small business on this basis and is therefore possibly overinclusive. Also, as noted above, an additional element of the definition of small business is that the entity must be independently owned and operated.
The Commission notes that it is difficult at times to assess these criteria in the context of media entities and its estimates of small businesses to which they apply may be over-inclusive to this extent.
Cable and Other Subscription Programming. The U.S. Census Bureau defines this industry as establishments primarily engaged in operating studios and facilities for the broadcasting of programs on a subscription or fee basis.
The broadcast programming is typically narrowcast in nature e.g., limited format, such as news, sports, education, or youth-oriented. These establishments produce programming in their own facilities or acquire programming from external sources. The programming material is usually delivered to a third party, such as cable systems or direct-to-home satellite systems, for transmission to viewers.
The SBA size standard for this industry establishes as small, any company in this category which receives annual receipts of $41.5 million or less.
According to 2012 U.S. Census Bureau data, 367 firms operated for the entire year. Of that number, 319 operated with
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annual receipts of less than $25 million a year and 48 firms operated with annual receipts of $25 million or more.
Based on this data, the Commission estimates that the majority of firms operating in this industry are small.
Cable System Operators Rate Regulation Standard. The Commission has developed its own small business size standards for the purpose of cable rate regulation. Under the Commissions rules, a small cable company is one serving 400,000 or fewer subscribers nationwide. Industry data indicate that there are 4,600 active cable systems in the United States. Of this total, all but five cable operators nationwide are small under the 400,000-subscriber size standard. In addition, under the Commissions rate regulation rules, a small system is a cable system serving 15,000 or fewer subscribers.
Commission records show 4,600 cable systems nationwide. Of this total, 3,900
cable systems have fewer than 15,000
subscribers, and 700 systems have 15,000 or more subscribers, based on the same records. Thus, under this standard as well, the Commission estimates that most cable systems are small entities.
Cable System Operators Telecom Act Standard. The Communications Act of 1934, as amended, also contains a size standard for small cable system operators, which is a cable operator that, directly or through an affiliate, serves in the aggregate fewer than one percent of all subscribers in the United States and is not affiliated with any entity or entities whose gross annual revenues in the aggregate exceed $250,000,000. As of 2019, there were approximately 48,646,056 basic cable video subscribers in the United States.
Accordingly, an operator serving fewer than 524,037 subscribers shall be deemed a small operator if its annual revenues, when combined with the total annual revenues of all its affiliates, do not exceed $250 million in the aggregate. Based on available data, the Commission finds that all but nine incumbent cable operators are small entities under this size standard. The Commission notes that it neither requests nor collects information on whether cable system operators are affiliated with entities whose gross annual revenues exceed $250 million.
Although it seems certain that some of these cable system operators are affiliated with entities whose gross annual revenues exceed $250 million, the Commission is unable at this time to estimate with greater precision the number of cable system operators that would qualify as small cable operators under the definition in the Communications Act.

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Satellite Telecommunications. This category comprises firms primarily engaged in providing telecommunications services to other establishments in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries by forwarding and receiving communications signals via a system of satellites or reselling satellite telecommunications. Satellite telecommunications service providers include satellite and earth station operators. The category has a small business size standard of $35 million or less in average annual receipts, under SBA rules. For this category, U.S.
Census Bureau data for 2012 show that there was a total of 333 firms that operated for the entire year. Of this total, 299 firms had annual receipts of less than $25 million. Consequently, the Commission estimates that the majority of satellite telecommunications providers are small entities.
All Other Telecommunications. The All Other Telecommunications category is comprised of establishments that are primarily engaged in providing specialized telecommunications services, such as satellite tracking, communications telemetry, and radar station operation. This industry also includes establishments primarily engaged in providing satellite terminal stations and associated facilities connected with one or more terrestrial systems and capable of transmitting telecommunications to, and receiving telecommunications from, satellite systems. Establishments providing internet services or voice over internet protocol VoIP services via clientsupplied telecommunications connections are also included in this industry. The SBA has developed a small business size standard for All Other Telecommunications, which consists of all such firms with gross annual receipts of $32.5 million or less.
For this category, U.S. Census data for 2012 show that there were 1,442 firms that operated for the entire year. Of these firms, a total of 1,400 had gross annual receipts of less than $25 million.
Thus, the Commission estimates that the majority of All Other Telecommunications firms potentially affected by its action can be considered small.
Broadband Radio Service and Educational Broadband Service.
Broadband Radio Service systems, previously referred to as Multipoint Distribution Service MDS and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service MMDS systems, and wireless cable, transmit video programming to subscribers and provide two-way high speed data operations using the
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