Congress Gets Into NextWave Debate, PCS Auctions Still Continue
By Kristy Bassuener
December 21, 2000
The C- and F-Block wireless license auction has plowed forward during the last two weeks, pulling in $9.3 billion by the end of the 19th round. The sale is the FCC’s biggest yet, despite protests from previous spectrum owner NextWave Telecom.
Ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers, Mich., and four other Congress members filed a friend of the court brief supporting NextWave’s stance that the FCC unlawfully cancelled its licenses while the company was still embroiled in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., as well as Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., signed the brief, filed this week with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
The legislators claim an earlier court decision enabling the FCC to reposess and resell the licenses while NextWave is still in reorganization permits “a governmental creditor to circumvent the bankruptcy process for its own self interest and pecuniary gain…” The brief continues, “if the FCC is permitted to carry out its cancellation of NextWave’s licenses, the FCC will succeed in destroying NextWave as an operating business…”
NextWave defaulted on payments for wireless licenses it won in a 1996 auction. The appeals court will hear verbal arguments for the case on March 15, 2001.
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