DA 98-1722


                                   Released:  August 28, 1998





VIA FACSIMILE AND FEDERAL EXPRESS


William J. Franklin, Esq.
Law Offices of William J. Franklin, Chartered
Suite 800
1200 G Street, N.W.
Washington, DC  20005-3814


RE:  Air Spectrum III, Inc. 
     220 MHz Auction (No. 18)
     

Dear Mr. Franklin:

This letter is in response to your request for a waiver of the Commission's rules in order to permit
acceptance of the FCC Form 175 you filed on behalf of your client, Air Spectrum III, Inc. ("Air
Spectrum") to participate in the Phase II 220 MHz Service auction.  Identifying a series of
technical problems you encountered in attempting to file the short-form application electronically,
you urge the Commission to accept as valid a telecopied signed version that you sent to the
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, location prior to the short-form filing deadline (5:30 p.m. ET on
August 17, 1998).  

Having reviewed the facts and circumstances of your situation in great detail, we conclude that a
grant of your waiver request is not in the public interest.  Our rules explicitly require that
manually-filed FCC Form 175s must contain an original hand-written signature and must be
received at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania by the short-form filing deadline.  Your telecopied signed
version failed to contain an original hand-written signature and your subsequently-filed FCC Form
175, which did contain an original hand-written signature, was received on August



 21, 1998 -- four days after the short-form filing deadline.  Moreover, when you began to
experience difficulties in making an electronic filing, you could have taken steps to meet the filing
requirements by concurrently filing manually -- as permitted by our rules.  We believe that strict
adherence to the filing rules is critical to the integrity of the auction, and conclude it is
inappropriate to grant your waiver request.  This action is taken in accordance with delegated
authority pursuant to 47 C.F.R. 0.331.  

                         Sincerely,



                         Amy J. Zoslov
                         Chief, Auctions and Industry Analysis Division
                         Wireless Telecommunications Bureau


cc:  Douglas B. Sinclair