THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180545
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JEANNINE AVERSA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
The Federal Communications Commission revised its rules Wednesday to give minorities and women a better chance to bid for a new crop of wireless communications licenses, including two-way paging and messaging services.
The new plan is designed to make it easier for minorities and women to acquire new wireless communications licenses. It responds to complaints that the original rules were not adequate.
Minority- and female-owned companies will be entitled to a 40 percent bidding credit, rather than the existing 25 percent. A company would only have to pay 60 percent of the winning bid to the government, said Don Gips, deputy chief of the FCC's Plans and Policy Office. The bidding credit will be available for 10 of the 30 regional licenses, he said.
None of 10 nationwide wireless licenses auctioned last month ended up in the hands of a minority- or female-owned company.
Federal regulators also changed the definition of ``small business,'' significantly expanding the number of companies eligible to pay winning bids in installments.
Now businesses with $40 million in annual revenue qualify, Gips said. Originally, companies with a net worth of less than $6 million and earning less than $2 million in profits qualified.
The FCC also decided to consider reserving a block of licenses to be bid on only by minorities and women. That would be the most significant change in the FCC's policy to award the advanced paging and messaging licenses, which are called narrow band personal communications services.
In this block, licenses would be available to operate in metropolitan markets and in cities. These licenses will be auctioned after the regional ones.
Under the proposal, a total of 1,200 licenses would be put in an ``entrepreneur's block.'' This way, groups historically lacking access to huge amounts of money would bid only against each other.
KEYWORDS: FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISION RULING by CNB