The last time a company run by Allen B. Salmasi was a top bidder in a government airwaves auction, it took eight years and the Supreme Court to unravel the mess that followed.

Now he's back.

Salmasi controls AWS Wireless Inc., one of the leading bidders in the airwaves auction currently under way.

The auction is expected to raise up to $15 billion and increase by half the amount of spectrum available to the mobile wireless industry. The expansion is large enough to create new competitors, improve service for existing customers and allow for new features, like streaming video.

In 1996, Salmasi was chairman and CEO of NextWave Telecommunications Inc., when the company bid a record $4.74 billion to buy the rights to 95 spectrum licenses. It was a large enough chunk of the public airwaves to provide coverage for nearly 94 million potential cell phone users.

Unfortunately, the company couldn't make its payments and filed for bankruptcy. The Federal Communications Commission repossessed the licenses and re-auctioned them for about $16 billion. NextWave claimed its bankruptcy protected the company's hold on the licenses, and eventually the Supreme Court agreed.

In 2004, NextWave and the FCC reached a settlement, ending the dispute and freeing the extraordinarily valuable spectrum from purgatory. A year later, the company emerged from bankruptcy.

The impact of the dispute on consumers was considerable, said J.H. Snider, research director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think-tank.

"It took productive spectrum out of use," he said. "It would be like nobody could go to the beach for a decade because the government couldn't make it available to the public."

By keeping the spectrum off the market, it kept prices for existing service high and quality low...

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