Who’s running the Wireless Telecom Bureau?
It’s not a rhetorical question.
Over the past two years, or about as long as Reed Hundt has been FCC chairman and spectrum auctions the rage, the WTB has evolved into a curious creature.
We know WTB, aided by Hundt and his economists, have raised $22 billion in spectrum auction pledges. Why that’s even more than all the White House coffees and Commerce trade mission-related campaign contributions rounded up by John Huang.
The word `pledges’ is key. There is a danger that the big money will eclipse policy and produce disastrous results a year or so from now, or about the time Hundt and his master, President Clinton, are gone from office.
That brings us to the issue at hand: the state of the Wireless Telecom Bureau. Confusion abounds: auctions, private wireless, 2.3 GHz, siting, hearing aid compatibility, microwave relocation, SMR and 220 licensing.
NextWave. If you listen to the FCC, you’d think those naughty folks at NextWave bullied and brow beat regulators into submission. On closer inspection, a picture emerges of a bureau in disarray-unable to give the $5 billion applicant straight answers for months on the precise source of foreign ownership concerns or when a decision would come. The licenses would be out by late November. November passed. December passed. Then on Jan. 3, owing to a nudge by communications attorney extraordinaire and FOB, Phil Verveer, the 56 licenses were granted. But with strings attached. The licenses were conditioned on NextWave fixing its foreign ownership problem.
Why all the questions at such a late date, when NextWave was in a do-or-die situation with its creditors? What was going on with NextWave’s applications in the months following their delivery in July to the FCC. Could the foreign ownership `problem’ have been corrected with early federal communication with NextWave.
If this a case where no one in WTB could make a decision, save for a push by a Hundt, and where the understanding of legal and financial issues governing debt vs. equity was so foggy that chief Michelle Farqhuar simply split the difference under pressure. Either way, the world is headed toward foreign-ownership liberalization.
Making licenses conditional is perhaps the worst of all decisions, for it creates uncertainty for NextWave and investors at a time when IPOs and high-tech stocks are troubled. NextWave represents perhaps the most promising prospect yet for bringing true competition to the AT&T, Sprint and Baby Bell oligopoly.
Wireless policy today is perhaps summed up best by Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
