Sec. 22.945  Interests in multiple applications.

    This section governs interests in applicants with mutually exclusive 
applications for a new cellular system. For the purposes of this 
section, ``interest in an application'' means interest in the applicant.
    (a) General. Except as otherwise provided in this section, parties 
must not have any interest, direct or indirect, in more than one 
application for authority to operate a new cellular system in the same 
cellular market.
    (b) Abutting CGSAs. Licensees of existing systems whose cellular 
geographic service area (CGSA) abuts a proposed CGSA may each file one 
application that is mutually exclusive with the applications of other 
such licensees, even though they share common owners, provided that such 
licensees do not thereby acquire a simultaneous interest in applications 
for both channel blocks in any geographical area.
    (c) Publicly traded corporate applicants. Parties must not have any 
interest, direct or indirect, in more than one mutually exclusive 
initial application for which the applicant is a publicly traded 
corporation, except that ownership interests of less than 5% are not 
considered. Ownership and other interests in applicants are attributed 
to their holder and deemed cognizable as set forth below.
    (1) Passive investors. Investment companies, as defined in 15 U.S.C. 
80a-3, insurance companies and banks holding stock through their trust 
departments in trust accounts are deemed to have a cognizable interest 
in a publicly traded cellular applicant only if they hold 10% or more of 
the stock of the applicant. This provision applies only if an applicant 
in which such parties hold an interest certifies in its application that 
no such party has exerted or attempted to exert any influence or control 
over the officers of the applicant.
    (2) Multiplier. Attribution of ownership interests in a publicly 
traded cellular applicant that are held indirectly by any party through 
one or more intervening corporations will be determined by successive 
multiplication of the ownership percentages for each link in the 
vertical ownership chain and application of the relevant attribution 
benchmark to the resulting product, except that wherever the ownership 
percentage for any link in the chain exceeds 50 percent, it is not 
included in the multiplication.