WASHINGTON-Chadmoore Communications Inc. may have to wait until December or January to hear if its licensing complaint against the Federal Communications Commission is valid.
The FCC last December denied specialized mobile radio operator Chadmoore’s extended implementation plan to offer wide-area SMR coverage, which Chadmoore filed with the agency in June 1995.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Nov. 5 heard arguments stemming from the FCC denying that application. The FCC denied Chadmoore’s plan based on newly adopted rules for wide-area licensing; however, those rules did not go into effect until 90 days later, and the commission accepted other similar applications during the same timeframe. The arguments formed the backbone of Chadmoore’s case.
The carrier also has a stay of the original order pending at the FCC, but Chadmoore attorney Marjorie Conner said the commission may sit on this while the appeals court deliberates.
In rehashing Chadmoore’s case, Conner said her client had spent the 14 months prior to its original filing negotiating with other SMR carriers, contracting for equipment and spending “a lot of money” to prepare for permission to serve a wide coverage area. Its application, however, was treated differently than others, and it wasn’t until court arguments last week that she was told the application was denied because Chadmoore “was too big.” Conner commented, “It was my impression that the new NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) was written for large companies.”
In explaining the FCC’s decision, attorney C. Grey Pash Jr. told the three-judge panel the other SMR licenses in question were granted on a conditional basis only, with an eye toward the projected rule changes. Judge Lawrence Silberman wondered how the FCC could deny an application based on proposals that could change direction during the course of comment and why an application could be denied retroactively.
,il7,11> Substantiating his belief that the FCC may be on the losing end of the argument, attorney Russell Fox of Gardner, Carton & Douglas said the court “would have allowed the FCC to look forward to new rules if they did it consistently. The question is, are similarly situated people treated the same?”
