WASHINGTON-NextWave Telecom Inc. appears to have gotten the attention of the House Judiciary Committee with a letter sent to its chairman last week complaining that the Federal Communications Commission is knowingly conducting a misinformation campaign.
“The March 23rd letter is designed to divert attention away from the FCC’s assault on the Bankruptcy Code … The FCC is attempting to seize through litigation sleight-of-hand what it has not achieved lawfully through the legislative process,” said Frank Cassou, NextWave executive vice president and general counsel, in a letter to Rep. Henry Hyde on Wednesday.
Last Thursday, it became known that tomorrow the House Judiciary commercial and administrative law subcommittee will hold a hearing on how the bankruptcy code relates to regulatory agencies. The FCC’s General Counsel Christopher Wright is expected to testify.
In addition to sending the letter to Hyde, NextWave placed a new ad in Capitol Hill newspapers.
The FCC had no comment on NextWave’s letter to Hyde at RCR press time.
FCC Chairman William Kennard sent a letter last month to Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) responding to ads that NextWave has placed in Capitol Hill newspapers questioning why the FCC rejected its offer to pay in full the $4.3 billion it owed from a 1996 auction of personal communications services C-block licenses.
Gordon’s letter was one of several that Kennard has received in recent weeks seeking to sway the FCC on how it should proceed with the scheduled re-auction of NextWave’s 90 C- and F-block licenses. Most, if not all, of the congressional submissions have attempted to persuade the FCC to keep the rules restricting the C- and F-blocks to designated entities.
Small businesses and select others qualify as DEs. Since the FCC announced on Jan. 12 that it intended to auction the NextWave licenses on July 26, large wireless carriers such as SBC Communications Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc. have urged the commission to either waive the rules for them or to lift the rules altogether claiming that small businesses cannot effectively function in what has become a nationwide marketplace.
Many of the congressional letters express a different view. This view says it is the DEs that provide service to small and medium-sized markets while the large nationwide carriers focus on the biggest cities in their markets first.
The FCC based its decision to declare that the licenses had canceled and to re-auction them on a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit released on Dec. 22. This decision said that bankruptcy law could not be used in the licensing and regulating of spectrum governed by communications law.
NextWave is appealing the FCC’s action to the FCC, the 2nd Circuit and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
