Bidding creeps up to $20bn in US spectrum auction
06 February 2008
Bidding creeps up to $20bn in US spectrum auction
The US communications regulator's sale of 700MHz spectrum has raked in close to $20bn in the two weeks since it launched.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Auction 73 had pulled in more than $18.8bn in anonymous bids for the FCC.
The most notable development is that bidding for the C Block of spectrum has topped $4.7bn, meaning that the so called 'open access rules' fought for by Google and the like, have been triggered.
Industry watchers say that Google only committed to spending $4.6bn on the auction, in order to guarantee the open access rules, which came into play when bidding reached this figure. Now that this number has [just] been beaten, it seems likely someone else, maybe Verizon, maybe AT&T, has stepped into the breach.
Much of the bidding now seems to be centred on chunks of regional spectrum that incumbent carriers need to flesh out their coverage.
Unfortunately, bids for the D Block of spectrum, which would be used for a public-private partnership to deliver a nationwide public safety network, seem to have bottomed out at $472m, way below the $1.3bn reserve.
Since the untimely departure of D Block favourite, Frontline, it seems more likely that the FCC will have to re-auction this swathe of spectrum under different rules.
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