THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 26, 1996 TAG: 9601260507
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Watch those zeroes.
That's a lesson a Puerto Rico-based company learned this week while bidding for a Federal Communications Commission license to provide cellular-like phone services in Hampton Roads.
In what was apparently a mistake of adding an extra zero, PCS 2000 L.P. of San Juan on Tuesday bid an astronomically high $180.1 million for a license to provide so-called personal communications services in the region. PCS is a new type of wireless phone service similar to cellular service.
PCS 2000's bid topped by more than $165 million the previous high bid for the local wireless phone license through 11 rounds of bidding dating back to mid-December. And in terms of price per person living in the area, it put Hampton Roads, briefly, high atop the list of nearly 500 markets in which the phone licenses are currently being auctioned.
PCS 2000's bid equated to about $110 per person living in Hampton Roads. The next-highest bid, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, was $49 per person. In New York, the high bid equated to about $36 per person.
PCS 2000's bid also was more than five times higher than winning bids submitted last year for two other personal communications services licenses by AT&T Corp. and a consortium including Bell Atlantic Corp. - in those cases, for territories covering most of Virginia.
In Hampton Roads, those companies and at least three others, including the bidder that prevails in the auction now under way, will go into competition with local cellular phone providers as early as next year.
PCS 2000 officials would like to be among the new service providers - but not at the steep price they bid Tuesday for the Hampton Roads license.
On Wednesday, company officials made a red-faced return to the FCC. They asked to withdraw their Norfolk high bid, saying they'd unintentionally tacked another zero onto the price, said Sue McNeil, an FCC legal adviser.
The FCC accepted the withdrawal and reopened the bidding. At the end of the round Thursday, another company, Washington-based Urban Communicators PCS L.P. had jumped in front in the Hampton Roads license auction: at $19.3 million.
That brought combined high bids for all 500 licenses nationwide to about $4.2 billion. The auction could continue for several weeks.
Is PCS 2000 off the hook for its Hampton Roads bidding mistake? Not necessarily, McNeil said. The company must file a petition for a waiver from an FCC rule that would otherwise require it to pay the difference between its withdrawn bid of $180 million and what the ultimate high bidder in the market agrees to pay.
If the FCC doesn't approve, that could put PCS 2000 on the hook for $150 million or more.
``We remind bidders to be very, very careful when submitting their bids,'' McNeil said.
PCS 2000 officials couldn't be reached to comment. by CNB