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.”