WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association Thursday urged the Federal Communications Commission to open the bidding to all companies for the recently returned spectrum of bankrupt NextWave Telecom Inc.
“Significant market changes have occurred during the four years since the FCC last modified the entrepreneur eligibility rules. Increased consumer demand for national and regional broadband services has driven the growing need for additional spectrum. Substantial blocks of premium C-block spectrum have remained unused, and the shortage of suitable commercial mobile radio services spectrum is even more severe today than four years ago,” said CTIA. “Bidding credits and other regulatory measures have proven to be more effective in enabling small businesses to acquire licenses and construct systems. Furthermore, unlike prior auctions, the Jan. 12 auction will make available substantial blocks of spectrum of returned NextWave spectrum that has languished for nearly eight years. Thus this auction presents unique circumstances warranting the commission’s long overdue re-assessment of the entrepreneur eligibility restrictions.”
The FCC expects to begin auctioning the licenses NextWave returned as part of a settlement negotiated earlier this year Jan. 12-five years to the day that the FCC canceled the licenses, the action that set it on a collision course with the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the court ruled in NextWave’s favor.
After the FCC canceled the licenses in 2000, it re-auctioned them in 2001 by creating some licenses that were available to all bidders and some licenses that were available only to designated entities-mostly small businesses. The spectrum NextWave bought in 1996 had been set aside for small businesses to allow them the opportunity to compete against the established telecommunications carriers.
“Taking more than half of the eligible licenses out of play severely limits the competitive marketplace,” said CTIA President Steve Largent. “The FCC’s proposed auction process in this case significantly increases transaction costs, and no one benefits from that, including consumers.”
In other PCS action, the FCC rejected an application Verizon Wireless filed for a nationwide license at 1.9 GHz because the agency said it is not auctioning a nationwide license at this time.
