Thursday April 30, 1:24 am Eastern Time
FCC says reauction of LMDS licenses likely in '99
WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission will likely conduct a second auction for LMDS licenses in 1999, not this year as some market participants had expected, a commission official said Wednesday.
''We will probably not have a reauction of those licenses until early next year,'' Amy Zoslov, acting chief of the auction division of the FCC's Wireless Bureau, said at a public forum on the auction.
The initial LMDS, or local multipoint distribution services, spectrum auction netted the government $578 million but no bids were made on 109 of the 986 licenses available, forcing a second auction.
Zoslov said the commission was mulling a variety of possible changes for the reauction, including changing the minimum bid and altering fees required for participation.
FCC officials also said the agency was considering conducting bidding over an Internet-based system instead of a private dial-in network, but an Internet system raised some security issues, they said.
LMDS uses microwaves to send high volumes of information between fixed points, making it suitable for replacing cable television or telephone wires but not mobile phones or pagers.
At the initial LMDS auction, which ended in March, leading bidders included WNP Communications, a private firm backed by seven venture capital funds, Nextband Communications, owned by Nextel Communications (NXTL - news) and Craig McCaw's Nextlink Communications (NXLK - news), and Winstar Communications (WCII - news). |
