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To: Dave who wrote (18188)	11/11/1998 8:42:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Respond to of 152472

To all - the story on (the evil) Omnipoint : November 11, 1998 Wireless-Communications Firms Settle Suit Involving License Auction By JOHN SIMONS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Three wireless-communications firms settled Justice Department lawsuits alleging that the companies colluded with rivals in a 1996 federal auction of wireless spectrum licenses. Mercury PCS II LLC, Jackson, Miss., Omnipoint Corp., Bethesda, Md., and 21st Century Bidding Corp., Newport Beach, Calif., were accused of using encoded numeric messages while placing dollar-amount bids during an auction of the wireless spectrum. The suits were filed Tuesday by the antitrust division in U.S. District Court here. The companies agreed to consent decrees, which forbid them from colluding with rivals. Omnipoint admitted no wrongdoing. The other companies couldn't be reached. The suits and the consent decrees were filed simultaneously. The consent decrees must be reviewed by a federal court. The Federal Communications Commission oversaw the auction of wireless airwaves in 1996, which are used to transmit wireless phone calls, pager messages and the like. Some 125 companies participated in the auction. According to Justice Department officials, who studied bid patterns, the three companies engaged in a simple scheme. The FCC had divided the country into 493 regions, numbered one to 493, in which bidders could vie for the rights to a wireless license. Mercury, Omnipoint and 21st Century allegedly alerted each other by ending their bids in a particular region with a dollar amount that corresponded to another region for which they wanted a license. The auction raised about $2.5 billion. The FCC caught wind of the alleged activities when some participants complained. Both it and the Justice Department began investigations. But the FCC concluded that the companies hadn't violated auction rules. Last August, the commission changed the auction format, making it impossible for companies to code each other and making such collusion a violation. Copyright © 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: Dave who wrote (18188)	11/11/1998 9:38:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Dave - Your price points may be a tad bit old. I saw an advertisement that would give a prospective consumer a free StarTac after the $50 rebate. Thanks for the info, but I'm trying to compare list prices which should have some correlation to manufacturer cost. Somewhat obviously a free Startac is subsidized. It is important to compare apples to apples. One service provider may offer the phone for $500 and a cheap/short contract while another with the same phone may offer it for free but with a 2 year expensive contract. If one service provider is offering a free Startac with a 2 year $100/mo contract and another service provider is offering a $500 Q phone with a 6 month $20/mo contract, then how do I know which phone is really more costly? Some might argue it doesn't matter since the prices depend so much on the service contracts, but again, somewhat obviously, this is false. Assume that the Q is 1/2 the cost (to the service provider) of the Startac. Then it is obvious that if the service provider wants to give both away, he has to require a longer, more expensive contract with the free Startac. The price point has mutated enough to make it difficult for us to do a comparison, but there is still a significant price point difference and the Q will sell to a different crowd than the Startac. Clark