NextWave has a problematic history in the wireless business. In 1996, it bid $4.74 billion to buy the rights to 95 spectrum licenses, big enough to cover nearly 94 million people. But the company couldn't make its payments and filed for bankruptcy protection. The FCC took back and re-auctioned the licenses, but NextWave argued that bankruptcy law protected it from seizure of its assets. It took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court, which sided with it. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2005, a year after it reached a settlement with the FCC. NextWave sold some of the licenses from the 1996 auction to Verizon Wireless, Cingular (now AT&T Inc.), and MetroPCS Communications Inc. It returned others to the FCC. NextWave's current spectrum holdings derive from another FCC auction in 2005, in which it spent $115.5 million, and from acquisitions from other companies.