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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: q_long who wrote (3227)	9/21/2000 4:51:51 PM
From: Drew Williams	Respond to of 196564

re: Nextwave wired.com Wireless Co. Seeks Auction Stay On Tuesday, NextWave Telecom filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, claiming that the agency is preventing the company from escaping bankruptcy by attempting to resell licenses sold to the firm some four years ago. The company said it will give the FCC until Friday to agree to its terms for a stay. If that doesn't happen, NextWave said it will seek a stay of the sale in federal appeals court in Washington D.C., where it currently has a lawsuit pending against the FCC. The petition is the latest in a series of legal offensives by NextWave in its ongoing battle with the FCC over a batch of spectrum licenses for wireless services that the commission auctioned off in 1996. NextWave claims it's the rightful owner of the licenses, since it submitted the $4.7 billion winning bid in the 1996 auction licenses and put down a 10 percent down payment. The FCC, however, says the licenses were cancelled because NextWave failed to come up with the rest of the cash on schedule. If the commission goes through with the sale, NextWave claims in the petition that it "will face liquidation, and its investors, creditors, and lenders will suffer hundreds of millions of dollars of pointless losses." The company says it couldn't pay the FCC on time because prices for spectrum licenses plummeted following the 1996 auction, and investors weren't offering NextWave the cash it needed. Since then, however, prices have risen, and NextWave has offered to pay the remaining $4.3 billion it owes. Now, company executives are hoping an appeal pending in federal court in Washington will put a damper on the FCC's hopes of a lucrative round of new bidding. FCC officials had no immediate comment on Tuesday's petition, although the commission has rejected similar attempts in the past. Earlier this month, when the commission announced it would re-auction NextWave's spectrum in December, FCC Chairman William Kennard said the sale would help speed up the pace at which advanced wireless services become available to the American public. It's unclear, however, whether the legal brouhaha will do much to diminish demand for the sought-after slice of airwaves. With big wireless firms clamoring for spectrum to use in next-generation mobile services, industry analysts expect the licenses will sell for several times the amount that NextWave originally agreed to pay.