Sprint Nextel asked the FCC to reject petitions for reconsiderati...

statutory authority to require Sprint Nextel to cover these litigation costs,” Sprint said: “This policy is also consistent with the Commission’s key early orders in this proceeding, and had greatly benefitted 800 MHz reconfiguration by encouraging the resolution of disputes through mediation and limiting the amount of de novo review at the Commission.” Sprint’s response was “expected and unfortunate,” said Alan Tilles, an attorney in the case. “The concept that a licensee, who has won at the FCC’s bureau level, should now have to pay for the huge expense of the administrative hearing which Nextel requested, is absurd and offensive,” Tilles told us. “This is nothing more than a hammer hanging over a licensee’s head, that if they don’t bend to Nextel’s wishes, the licensee will incur huge non-reimbursable costs. That is not the deal that this office negotiated with Nextel, the deal which became the consensus plan.” “As we said in our filing, the FCC’s approach to post- mitigation costs is both consistent with regulatory statutes and working well -- less than five percent of all mediations have been appealed to the Bureau and most of those have been settled by the parties,” a Sprint spokesman said Thursday.