WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission has received the implied blessing to postpone the auctions of licenses in the 700 MHz band to September.
“While planning any auction requires a careful balancing of all of the statutory considerations before the [FCC], I understand that this was an especially difficult process given the added and relatively unusual statutory constraint requiring the commission to hold the auction and deposit the receipts within the fiscal year 2000,” said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
The FCC recently delayed the auctions to Sept. 6. They originally were scheduled for June.
Domenici said in a May 5 letter that it was clear in January the FCC would have a difficult time meeting the Sept. 30 deadline, but the deadline was imposed anyway because “the [Office of Management and Budget] assured the Congress that this auction could proceed at a pace faster than previous auctions and that all receipts could be deposited before the end of [FY 2000].”
BellSouth Corp. began raising questions about the auction in March after it determined that what it thought was valuable spectrum-especially for a mobile high-speed Internet service it wants to develop-was full of TV broadcasters that do not have to vacate the spectrum until 2007 or later.
