The U.S. General Accounting Office said it is precluded from investigating the Federal Communications Commission’s procedures in granting Nextel Communications Inc. enhanced specialized mobile radio licenses in the last decade because of a pending lawsuit regarding the 800 MHz auction.
Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.) asked the GAO to probe the FCC’s licensing procedures based on a request from constituent Steve Grundset, president of SMR operator Midwest Mobile Tel Inc. in Rockford, Ill. Grundset and his D.C. attorney Robert Schwaninger, of Schwaninger & Schwaninger Associates, had outlined what they claimed were improper actions by FCC staff that led to Nextel dominating the SMR market and sweeping the 1997 800 MHz private radio spectrum action. Schwaninger claimed FCC staff processed numerous defective ESMR applications submitted by Nextel rather than denying them.
The GAO said as a matter of policy it won’t investigate those claims since Schwaninger, on behalf of the Small Business in Telecommunications Inc., in December filed a petition for review with the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit against the FCC over its 800 MHz auction procedures. The SBT claims the commission failed to properly define a small business when it issued a new licensing framework for the auction and did not disclose bidding rules until after the deadline for registered bidders.
