Some telecommunications analysts are charging the Federal Communications Commission with luring telephone-service entrepreneurs into huge investments and then crushing their markets.

• Specifically, in the auction of broadcast spectrum licenses which ended in May of last year, young telecommunications companies paid up to 2.5 times the prices paid earlier by big wire-based companies for licenses.

• Then the FCC took more than a year to complete its licensing of the new competitors -- giving incumbent wireless-service providers more than a two-year head start.

• After the success of the first sale, Congress ordered the FCC to dump huge new spans of spectrum on the market -- thus flooding the market and seriously eroding the value of the licenses.

The ability of new licensees to borrow money and build innovative new networks has been crippled, and companies are in danger of defaulting on more than $10 billion in scheduled payments to the FCC.

A number of analysts are urging the FCC to rectify its mistakes by taking steps to restore the competitive potential of the fledgling companies.

• The agency is being encouraged to act quickly to restructure the debt of the companies, in recognition of the prolonged delay in licensing.

• The new entrepreneurs might be freed from interest payments on their debt obligations to the government during the early years of their licenses.

• This would allow them to construct networks that could finance repayment of the government loans and accumulated interest.

At the very least and as a last resort, say critics, the FCC should offer last year's successful bidders the opportunity to participate in a speedy re-auction, credit their initial down payments against new bids, and offer a credit for build-out commitments already made.

Critics say the fiasco has allowed the old, established, wire-based companies to manipulate the rules to their own advantage. Thus the expected competition in local and long-distance telephone services has not emerged.

Observers charge that the U.S. government has, in effect, imposed an oppressive tax on some of the most creative forces in U.S. communications.