Hammer comes down on 700MHz auction
19 March 2008
Hammer comes down on 700MHz auction
US communications regulator the FCC announced the close of the 700MHz spectrum auction on Tuesday, after 261 rounds of bidding.
Auction 73, which kicked off on January 24, raised more than any other sale in the FCC's history - $19.592bn to be precise. By comparison, the Advanced Wireless Service auction of 2006 raised $13.9bn.
Eight licences remain unsold, including the D block of spectrum which was reserved for the creation of a public/private partnership to create a nationwide public safety and commercial network. Unfortunately this block only attracted one bid, which fell well short of the reserve. Unsold licences will be re-auctioned at a later date.
The C block however, did win enough interest, $4.75bn worth to be exact, to trigger the open access provisions. While the FCC has not yet revealed the licence winners, it is believed that Google 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. Once that number was [just] beaten, it seems likely someone else, maybe Verizon, maybe AT&T, stepped into the breach.
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