There are few things more sleazy than retrospective legislation – it was legal when you did it, but we’re changing the law so that you can be hit for what you did, so we take a pretty dim view of the US Federal Communications Commission suddenly realising that it had given away something rather valuable when it gave free pioneer preference licences to three companies committing to pioneer Personal Communications Services: while the exact size of the payments won’t be known until similar licences are auctioned by the agency later this year, the total is expected to be at least $500m and could approach $1,000m; the three – Omnipoint Communications Inc, Cox Enterprises Inc and American Personal Communications Inc, 70%-owned by Washington Post Co, are, not surprisingly not only mad but worried because not only will the companies will pay either 90% of the winning bid for a similar licence in the same region, or 90% of an adjusted price based on the average price per person of similar licences in the top 10 markets, but Omnipoint, in Colorado Springs, faces disaster because it is a tiny start-up and the payment will be due 30 days after the licence is granted, while other small businesses winning licences get 10 years to make the payments.
