Motorola Inc. said it will fight the attempt by the Internal Revenue Service to retrieve $500 million in what the governmental agency describes as unpaid taxes. The IRS wants the money based on the company’s financial activities between 1996 and 2000. The agency said the company should have remitted $500 million in taxes on an additional $1.4 billion in earnings within the years in question. In Motorola’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said this may have an “adverse effect on its financial position, liquidity and its quarterly results in the period investigated.”
The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have approved Verizon Wireless’ purchase of bankrupt NextWave Telecom Inc.’s New York license. The deadline for oppositions expired at midnight Aug. 9. Verizon Wireless made the required minimum bid of $930 million in a private auction held by NextWave last month. The New York license covers more than 20 million people. Verizon declined to comment.
Cingular Wireless L.L.C. has joined the list of mobile-phone carriers offering wireless priority service to federal, state and local leaders, and first responders. Cingular expects to make WPS available in all of its markets by this time next year. WPS contracts are awarded by the National Communications System, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security. CDMA carriers Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS are the only nationwide carriers yet to offer wireless priority service. Work is under way to develop a CDMA solution for wireless priority service. WPS provides authorized federal, state, and local government leaders as well as key private-sector leaders and other decision-makers with the ability to have calls moved to the head of the queue in an emergency. WPS does not interfere or interrupt consumer wireless calls already in progress. A similar program, the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service, is available for wireline users.
