WASHINGTON-The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s Auctions & Industry Analysis Division held an open forum late last month to gather ideas on how to improve its interaction with future auction hopefuls in order to make a sometimes-confusing process easier to understand.
An audience populated by past participants in the Federal Communications Commission’s 800 MHz specialized mobile radio; 900 MHz SMR; D-, E- and F-block personal communications services; Wireless Communications Services; and unserved cellular area auctions coupled with related attorneys, analysts and potential players, addressed the commission’s pre-auction communications practices, its pre-auction process and its auction conduct.
FCC Form 175, which signals a bidder’s interest in entering an auction and forms the basis of the FCC’s decision on qualifications, are only available for public viewing in the commission’s public reference room or when purchased from ITS, which prints and sells regulatory documents submitted to the FCC by the public. As public documents, it was suggested that Form 175 information be posted on the commission’s Web site in a generic word-processing or ASCII format. John Guili, director of automation for the Auctions Division, said that such a posting will be explored.
Jack Bond of Mountain SMR Group, which bid in the recent 800 MHz SMR auction, told the division that more clarification was needed in auction-related public notices and in bidders’ packages regarding the relationship between upfront payments and bidding units. Brett Tarnutzer, an Auctions Division senior analyst, promised to “take a crack at … taking out the legalese” that explains the relationship and putting it into plain English.
Mountain SMR’s Bond then asked that the minimum bid “lock step” that the FCC used for the first time during the 800 MHz auction also should be changed. “We already had an idea of what our market was worth to us, and we would have liked to have gotten there sooner,” he said. Answering that “one increment at a time is painful” and that “we don’t know where an auction will end,” Louis Sigalos, chief of the Auctions Operation Branch, did say that multiples of the FCC-determined minimum bid in each round are being considered during the upcoming LMDS auction and for other future spectrum sales.
Dan Ball of Southern Co., which also bid in the SMR auction, wondered why it took so long to get a refund of excess upfront fees when the bidders’ package promised a “prompt and automatic refund … within 45 days of the close of the auction.” Sigalos was surprised that the system was promising 45 days, saying that he would “double-check” the process and try to tighten up the time frame because these monies are collected well before the auction begins and sit interest-free in the Mellon Bank.
Any auction payments must be wired from the bidder’s bank to the Mellon Bank, and Geoff Stearn of Nextel Communications Inc. commented that it would be helpful if Mellon Bank could confirm to a bidder that the payment had been received. Andy Cox, an FCC financial staffer, explained the Mellon Bank will only confirm to the issuing bank and to the FCC that a wire payment has been received, and that a bidder needs to check with the home bank.
The time frame to receive auction software sometimes is a problem, said Kathleen Kaercher of Washington, D.C., law firm Brown & Schwaninger, in that sometimes it arrives only days before the mock or the real auction, which doesn’t leave much time to install or experiment.
The FCC’s Guili said the qualified bidders’ list “is the controlling factor” as to when bidder packages are sent Federal Express, and that the software package goes out within 48 hours of the bidder confirmation package. Guili will explore including the software in the first package rather than in the second.
Kaercher also mentioned that the suggestion-box feature of the bidding software had been difficult to install, but Guili ascertained that all problems with Windows and Windows 95 had been solved. He also would take a “serious look” at allowing suggestions to be faxed or e-mailed to the Auctions Division during the course of the bidding.
Mountain SMR Group’s Bond added that he had difficulty getting the auction software to work on his company’s computers in time to participate in the mock auction, which was scheduled to take place only days before the real bidding was scheduled to start. Currently, there is no telephonic mock auction in which bidders can participate, although there is a telephonic bidding link. Guili said the Auctions Division will explore developing a telephonic mock auction, although he admitted “the FCC really likes the electronic aspect … but maybe we’re moving too fast for some people.”
