hand-held microbrowsers, designed for the four-to-five-line text window of the typical cell phone, using a proto- col called Wireless Access Protocol (WAP). WAP was rolled out worldwide in the late 1990s. It was given marketing names such as "wireless Web," but it no more resembled the real World Wide Web than did a frozen "slyder" hamburger from the convenience store resemble a sirloin steak. WAP suffered from its small size, its limited "walled garden" content (unlike the wide-open Internet), and its by-the-minute price. Low speed was the least of its problems. Auctions as a Fair Way to Allocate Scarce Spectrum By the early 1990s, the U.S. Congress, like many other governments, realized that wireless telephony licenses were extremely valuable, too valuable to be given away. So Congress passed a law requiring the FCC to hold auctions for most future licenses. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a cottage industry had sprung up in Washington helping speculators file applications for the remaining wireless licenses, which were being awarded by lottery. Lotteries were also used for other emerging radio services, such as multipoint distribution service, a fixed system originally billed as "wireless cable." Of course the idea was that the lot- tery winner would immediately auction off the license to the highest bidder any- way. So the FCC merely cut out the middleman. Losing by Winning: Wireless License Auctions The PCS Auction Was a Success A seminal bandwidth auction took place between December 1994 and March 1995. The FCC auctioned off the first two "wideband personal communica- tions service" (PCS) licenses out of the six planned for each market nation- wide [3]. PCS operated at a higher frequency than cellular (1,850 - -1,990 MHz, compared with 825-894 MHz for cellular), but it was still adequate for many of the same applications. PCS as originally conceived could operate in differ- ent modes-a proposed "low-tier" PCS was a sort of souped-up cordless phone, not suited for mobile use. But "high-tier" PCS was a