The US Federal Communications Commission was due to vote yesterday on how to allocate the frequencies still available on the increasingly valuable US radio spectrum, in a move that should give the go-ahead to Personal Communications Network in the US: among the issues the commission must decide are how many licences to allocate to each market and how much much ground each licence will cover, and it will also announce rules governing the government’s first ever auction of spectrum licences in an exercise expected raise as much as $10,200m to help reduce the federal deficit; MCI Communications Corp will be hanging on the vote, having formed an alliance with other telephone, cable and other types of companies in the hopes the agency will allow it to bid for a nationwide Personal Communications Services licence, but the Commission was thought unlikely to have reached a decision on whether to allow national licences in time for last night’s vote.
