AWS applicants file short forms

Applicants for the Federal Communications Commission's Advanced Wireless Services auction--also called Auction 66--next month were required to file "short form" applications by yesterday, and those that did so included Verizon Wireless and Time Warner Cable, whose CEO said yesterday the cable TV firm may be bidding with its partners in its multimedia joint venture with Sprint.

The filing of the short firm indicates interest in bidding, but doesn't require any financial commitment. A Merrill Lynch research report this week suggested that traditional mobile firms Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Cingular Wireless could have only limited interest in Auction 66. The report said bidders for regional licenses are likely to include Metro PCS and Leap Wireless. Applicants are required to make pay desposits by June 1, at which time the field of likely bidders for the auction is expected to become much more clear. However, the FCC may go with a blind bidding process, in which case the identities of most bidders may not be known until after bids have been made.

There has been speculation in recent weeks that a few companies from outside the traditional telecom industry might bid, though no such companies have verified their interest.

The auction itself is slated to begin on June 29. In related news, TeleTruth, which describes itself as a custoer advocacy group, today filed an $8 billion complaint with the FCC alleging that Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint and other large wireless companies that have been major bidders in prevous FCC auction, "rigged" certain auctions over the last several years that were intended to allocate licenses to small businesses by creating smaller shell companies that qualified for those auctions.