So it seems ARTT is healthier than I would have given them credit for. I was starting to doubt their ability to continue as an ongoing venture. They're really amassing quite a hunk of airwaves also, getting pretty comparable to WinStar. They now have 358 licenses (channels) while I count WinStar as having 374. Plus ARTT has the licenses in Europe. Obviously WinStar's licenses have much greater value as they have much greater bandwidth in the major markets. WinStar averages approx 550 MHz in each of the top 50 markets while ARTT has only 300 MHz in only 21 of the top 50. Hense the 800 million channel pops for WCII vs only 371 for ARTT. But still pretty impressive for ARTT. They'd be a heck of a buy for WinStar.
It seems this overlapping of bandwidth was an issue that was addressed and remedied in WinStar's favor in, gosh , many, many, moons ago. Very, very vague in the back of my mind (of course a lot of that has to do with old age). Maybe someone else will recall what I'm thinking of.
You want a real bear case that has to do with the FCC: WinStar doesn't own any of their airwaves, rather they "lease" them from the FCC. All of their leases expire I believe in the year 2001. At that time it is totally up to the FCC whether or not to renew the leases. Obviously it is almost a guarantee that they will get renewed, but what if the wrong guy was in the wrong place, and just said screw you, we screwed up giving these to you for free in the first place, we ain't doing it again. Probably not even worth while considering, but a tough what if. |
