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To: Wild Turkey who wrote (24084)	3/11/1999 8:03:00 PM
From: SKIP PAUL	Respond to of 152472

Omnipoint Makes $41 Million Down Payment for Wireless Auction Bloomberg News Mar 11 1999 5:35PM ET Omnipoint Makes $41 Million Down Payment for Wireless Auction Washington, March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Omnipoint Communications Corp., a U.S. wireless-phone company serving the Northeast, Midwest and Florida, plans to bid aggressively in an upcoming federal government auction of wireless-communications licenses. The company made a down payment of $41 million for the right to bid on the 356 licenses up for grabs. That's more than $20 million more than any other company. The more money a company puts down, the more licenses it can bid for. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission set this auction as the final chapter in a long saga involving the licenses, which are set aside for small entrepreneurs. Most of the licenses being auctioned off beginning March 23 were first auctioned in December, 1996. Many companies that won them overbid, and then couldn't raise the money to pay. ''The FCC certainly hopes that this finally gets this spectrum back in the market, facilitating the build-out of new services,'' said Paul Glenchur, a telecommunications analyst with Charles Schwab Corp.'s Washington Research Group. The biggest bidders in the original auction -- NextWave Telecom Inc., General Wireless Inc. and Pocket Communications Inc. -- declared bankruptcy. Companies participating in the first auction bid a total of $10.2 billion for licenses. Bethesda, Maryland-based Omnipoint won licenses at the first auction. Under an FCC agreement offered to all license winners, Omnipoint handed back to the government 14 licenses it had originally won, and gave back half of the airwaves of four other licenses. Sixty-six bidders qualified to participate in the new auction. In total, 208 30-megahertz licenses, 134 15-megahertz licenses and 14 10-megahertz licenses are being auctioned. Some licenses are in major metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Dallas and New Orleans. San Diego-based Leap Wireless International Inc., which was spun off from Qualcomm Inc. last year, made the second-highest down payment: $20 million. The licenses are for so-called personal communications services, or PCS, which can provide phone, voice mail, paging, and other services in one hand-held device. As in the original auction, only companies with gross revenue of less than $125 million in each of the last two years can participate in the new auction. To make sure the new auction doesn't run into the same problems as the first, the FCC eliminated installment payments for the licenses.