Today's decision is but the latest chapter in the tortured history of the FCC's so-called "Pioneer's Preference" rules. Sadly, this action will punish the quintessential pioneer these rules were designed to favor.

Because this pioneer followed the rules of the road at the time it made key business decisions, yet was forced to pay a fee to the government pursuant to statutory authority granted ex post facto, I respectfully dissent.

Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, Inc. ("Mtel"), which currently does business under the SkyTel and Destineer brands, is a Jackson, Mississippi- based telecommunications company that invented high-capacity two-way paging systems at a time -- the early 1990s -- when limited function numeric pagers were the state of the art. For its ingenuity and innovation, Mtel was awarded an FCC "Pioneer's Preference" in June 1993.

Although remarkably advanced, Mtel's technology was not capable of seeing into the future and, accordingly, Mtel could not foresee that the FCC would, a few months later, be granted statutory authority to license radio stations by auction. Nor could Mtel foresee that over a year later the Commission would decide to assess a huge -- $33 million -- fee on Mtel simply because other, subsequent PCS licensees that did not receive a Pioneer's Preference had to obtain their licenses in an auction.

I would have preferred that the Commission reassess the fairness of charging this pioneer any fee given that Mtel was awarded a preference before we had authority to make such an assessment. At the very least, we should have reconsidered the magnitude of the fee given Mtel's obvious and entirely reasonable reliance on then-existing FCC authority and rules. I hope, out of fairness to pioneering Mtel, that this is not the final chapter for its claim.