Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (37029)	7/23/1999 2:57:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 152472

All....Friday July 23 2:44 PM ET U.S. Court Says Qualcomm Must Get Spectrum License By Aaron Pressman WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wireless telephone maker Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) must be given a license to operate wireless phone service by the Federal Communications Commission, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled Friday. The order reversed 1997 and 1998 decisions by the FCC to deny a license to operate phone service in southern Florida in the Personal Communications Service, or PCS, band under an assignment procedure that Congress later eliminated. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that San Diego-based Qualcomm was entitled to a license even though Congress eliminated the FCC's ''pioneer preference'' in 1997 in favor of auctioning wireless licenses. Since the FCC has long since auctioned the PCS band licenses for Miami-Fort Lauderdale to Sprint PCS's Sprint Spectrum LP, the court ordered the agency to ''identify a suitable spectrum and award Qualcomm the license for it.'' Sprint PCS is the wireless operation of telephone company Sprint Corp. (NYSE:FON - news) . Qualcomm senior vice president Kevin Kelley said the company will seek another license from the FCC, but would not press to get Sprint's Miami license. ''The question is what spectrum do they have and when we will get it?'' Kelley said. ''We indicated it wasn't our intention to try to get the Sprint license in Miami. We were interested in getting the Phoenix license and now that's not available either.'' The company currently operates a satellite wireless communications service for trucks but does not run any U.S. wireless telephone service, Kelley said. FCC officials were not immediately available for comment. Under the old rules, issued in 1991, the FCC gave wireless licenses to companies that had developed new services or innovative proposals for use of the airwaves. In 1992, the FCC denied Qualcomm's application for a license for southern Florida, saying the company had only modified a technology used in another wireless band for use in PCS. Qualcomm sued and the court ruled in 1997 that the FCC had arbitrarily rejected the company's application since another company that also modified a service from another band was granted a license. But while the FCC was reconsidering its Qualcomm decision, Congress eliminated the pioneer preference. In Friday's decision, the court found that lawmakers did not intend to deprive Qualcomm of a license it was owed under the old rules even if those rules were being replaced. ''Nothing suggests that when Congress advanced the sunset date in 1997, it intended to upset settled expectations, much less undo the vested rights of an applicant that had already obtained an entitlement to a pioneer's preference under a judicial mandate with which the FCC was obliged to comply,'' the unanimous three-judge panel wrote.