Reed Hundt has been spending a lot of time on planes lately. Mostly he’s been shuttling between his Washington, D.C., office and Silicon Valley to meet with potential investors in his fledgling company, Frontline Wireless, which is aiming to create an entirely new kind of wireless network. When he’s not behind closed doors haggling with investors, the former Federal Communications Commission chairman has been poring over regulations and discussing bidding strategies with his fellow Frontline executives. His days often start at 6 a.m. on one coast and end at 9 p.m. on the other.

All of this is to prepare Frontline for the upcoming wireless spectrum auctions that will sell off the last significant slice of the airwaves to be made available in the foreseeable future. The spectrum, known as the 700 MHz band, is powerful and versatile enough to give an upstart like Frontline the ability to challenge wireless incumbents like Verizon and AT&T. And because of lobbying efforts by companies like Frontline and Google, a part of the new spectrum must be made into a network open to any device a user chooses to connect to it. Both private and public interests hope this provision will spur innovation and create more choices for consumers. No matter what, the upcoming auctions, which are to begin in January, are likely to have a huge impact on the future of the wireless industry.

It is perhaps with only a little bit of overstatement, then, that Janice Obuchowski, Frontline’s chairperson and a former U.S. assistant secretary of commerce, says, “Whoever gets this [spectrum] will pretty much control the gateway to the future.”

Hundt understands this concept very well, because as chairman of the F.C.C. from 1993 to 1997 he introduced the system of holding auctions for wireless spectra, a radical shift from the previous era, when the F.C.C. had distributed spectra via an open lottery that many criticized for essentially giving away incredibly valuable public property.

“Our goal was to help the winners attract the capital necessary to invest in building their businesses as quickly as possible,” Hundt wrote in his 2000 memoir, You Say You Want a Revolution. “The result would be huge capital expenditure stimulating the economy, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and lowering the price of cellular phone calls through competition instead of retail price regulation.”

Hundt and Frontline’s interest in the new spectrum is twofold: First, the company hopes to create a nationwide first-responder’s network for emergency workers to communicate with one another in times of crisis. The need for such a network was highlighted by the communications mishaps experienced during Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 when police and firefighters frequently found themselves unable to get through to other emergency workers operating on different bandwidths. In such emergencies, the communications of these public safety officers would take precedence on Frontline’s network, while at all other times, Frontline would have full use of the band for its wireless service, which could compete with the other existing networks.

Equally important to Frontline, however, is the spur to competition that will come from creating a wireless network open to any device or application, not just those developed by a particular network’s operator, as is the case now. (For their part, the incumbents say that such restrictions guarantee the quality of their users’ experiences.) Hundt, who serves as Frontline's vice chairman, likens the wireless Bells—such firms as Verizon and AT&T Wireless—to a cartel, saying that “it’s like two guys who won’t get out of the buffet line.”

Both of Frontline’s goals go back to the objectives that guided Hundt when he was F.C.C. chairman and when he worked as an antitrust lawyer: to serve the public interest and devise fair rules for competition.

Of the first-responder’s network, Hundt says that “it’s a tremendous honor to even be a part of this.” During Hundt’s tenure as F.C.C. chairman, the agency allocated some bandwidth for public safety use, but Congress never appropriated the money needed to actually build out a network. When the current F.C.C. chairman, Kevin Martin, began considering rules for the upcoming auction, Hundt and Frontline’s other executives convinced Martin that a public-private partnership would be a way to fund the network at virtually no cost to taxpayers. “I’m really happy with being able to come back and remedy this problem,” Hundt says.

Hundt is equally excited by the prospect of creating an open wireless network. “If we’re successful here, it will really be great for consumers,” he says. “People will be startled to find out what innovation can really do. I predict every electronics device in the world will [eventually] be connected to the network.”

Hundt’s goal of invigorating the industry through competition is shared by Frontline’s high-profile investors and executives, including famed venture capitalist John Doerr, former Netscape C.E.O. Jim Barksdale (who, not coincidentally, is also head of Mississippi’s post-Katrina reconstruction effort), and early Google investor Ram Shriram.

“I think there’s a whole set of wonderful software applications that are not seeing the light of day because the process of getting certified and approved by a carrier is very onerous for lots of little garage startups,” says Shriram. “This is about the next little startup that eventually has the potential to become an important and useful application to consumers.”

Hundt says his deep-seated belief in the virtue of competition is a result of his training as an antitrust lawyer. “I was an antitrust lawyer for 14 years, and competition is the basic tenet of antitrust law,” Hundt says. “That’s what guarantees freedom of choice for consumers.”

In advocating for an open wireless network earlier this year, Hundt and Frontline were lobbying side-by-side with Google, which has not yet said whether it plans to participate in the coming auctions. But partnering with a deep-pocketed interest like Google could make it much easier for Frontline to be a real contender in the auction—and the two do share a commitment to shaking up the industry, as well as key investors like Shriram. For his part, Hundt is tight-lipped about who, if anyone, Frontline might partner with. (“It’s like the Academy Awards,” he jokes.) But when it files its initial paperwork in early December, Frontline and others will be required to disclose any bidding partners, and the battle lines will be drawn.

Even with Google, a team of seasoned telecom players, and a handful of high-profile investors in its corner, however, Frontline won’t have an easy time trying to win the spectrum auction next year. The winning bid is likely to be high, perhaps in excess of $10 billion, and the incumbents have a huge interest in making sure this bandwidth doesn’t fall into the wrong hands—i.e., those of a company like Frontline that would establish a network that would threaten the incumbents’ business model. But Hundt is undaunted. “Undoubtedly, the odds are against us,” he acknowledges. “But you can’t discourage me.”