Wireless Spectrum Auction Draws Newcomers
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Oil comany Chevron and leading carriers AT&T, Verizon want to join the bidders, which include Google.
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A start-up wireless company has  proposed a high-stakes debate with Verizon Communications  before U.S. regulators considering how the government should  conduct an auction of valuable wireless spectrum.
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(InfoWorld) - T-Mobile USA Inc. came out the biggest spender in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction, which ended Monday. Participants bid a total of nearly US$13.9 billion on 1,087 licenses to offer 3G (third-generation) mobile services in areas across the U.S. The auction began Aug. 9 and went on for 161 rounds. The radio frequencies could be used for services including data, voice and video on mobile devices. The auction is the first of two that should roughly double the amount of radio spectrum available in the U.S. for mobile services. The FCC is also preparing to auction frequencies around 700 MHz that have been used for TV broadcasts. Moving those to mobile use could take years. T-Mobile is playing catch-up against bigger carriers in introducing 3G services. Its bidding company, T-Mobile License LLC, had the winning bids on 120 licenses and will pay almost $4.2 billion for its spectrum. All told, the licenses it won could reach almost 475 million people, a number greater than the U.S. population. There was a wide variety of licenses up for auction, ranging from local to regional coverage. The five biggest bidders, led by T-Mobile, represented the country's biggest cellular companies. Cellco Partnership, representing Verizon Wireless Inc., came in second place with $2.8 billion in bids for 13 licenses. SpectrumCo LLC, representing Sprint Nextel Corp. and cable partners, bid almost $2.4 billion for 137 licenses and Metro PCS AWS LLC bid almost $1.4 billion for eight licenses. Cingular Wireless LLC, represented by Cingular AWS LLC, came in fifth with bids of more than $1.3 billion for 48 licenses. Overall, more than half of the 104 winning bidders that participated were certified as small businesses, according to the FCC. The agency put 1,122 licenses up for auction. The unsold licenses will be made available again in a future auction. The winners need to make down payments within ten days after the FCC puts out a public notice on the close of the auction. In the same time period, they have to submit long-form applications for the licenses.
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AT&amp;T and Verizon Wireless want to go up against other current mobile operators and some possible future competitors, including Google, in next month&#39;s&#160;auction for 700MHz wireless spectrum&#160;around the U.S.The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released lists of accepted and incomplete applications for the auction, in which it will sell licenses to frequencies that are set to be vacated by analog TV stations. It has accepted 96 applications and reported 170 as incomplete. The latter need to be completed by Jan. 4.AT&amp;T and Verizon are not surprise entrants but are the country&#39;s biggest mobile operators. If either carrier won a portion of the spectrum that has been designated for use by any device and any service, it would have to open up its network more than any big U.S. operator ever has. Verizon has already unveiled part of a plan to further open its network.They were on the list of incomplete applications, along with smaller mobile operators Alltel and MetroPCS. Cable operator Cox Communications, an archrival of the telecommunications giants, is also preparing an application. And cellular technology giant Qualcomm, which is already building a mobile entertainment network on vacated TV channels, is also gearing up to bid. Would-be bidders with incomplete applications have until Jan. 4 to complete their paperwork.Google earlier this year&#160;offered to participate in the auction&#160;in return for the FCC imposing open-network requirements. The booming Internet company&#39;s involvement could drive up bids all around, helping the government reap its hoped-for $10 billion payday for the spectrum.&#160;Google&#39;s application&#160;has already been accepted, the FCC said Tuesday. So has that of Towerstream, a wireless broadband provider to businesses.One surprise applicant yet to complete its papers is oil giant Chevron.Participation by Chevron in the auction comes &#8220;out of the blue,&#8221; said analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. However, oil companies and utilities are big wireless users, so he can see why Chevron might be interested.Chevron, like Google, is unlikely to actually build a network, though, he said. &#8220;I can see them potentially winning but then becoming landlords, renting it out,&#8221; he said. For both companies, that decision wouldn&#8217;t be based on the cost of building a network but on the experience required: Neither company has any history of constructing and operating a wireless network, a complicated undertaking.Also Tuesday, the agency extended the Dec. 28 deadline for upfront payments in the auction to Jan. 4 and pushed back a mock auction until Jan. 22. The auction itself is set to begin Jan. 24.Nancy Gohring, in Seattle, contributed to this report.
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TechWeb - The FCC's Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction has concluded with 1,087 licenses auctioned off for nearly $14 billion.
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Bids in the F.C.C.âs auction for wireless spectrum reached the governmentâs $10 billion goal. One problem: bidding for the biggest block of frequencies stalled at $4.3 billion, below the $4.6 billion reserve price.
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High-speed Internet access, streaming video, music downloads and other special new features may soon be in store for mobile phone owners thanks to an unprecedented airwaves auction.
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A venture led by the Microsoft co-founder has applied to bid in a U.S. auction of wireless airwaves, along with Google, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm.
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The auction for rights to a highly valuable swath of the nationâs airwaves will begin Thursday and is expected to include multibillion-dollar bids from the nationâs two biggest wireless phone companies.
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Bidding reached $18.55 billion on  Friday in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's  record-setting auction of government-owned wireless airwaves,  but there were no new offers for two large, closely watched  slices of spectrum.
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Here's how the FCC's auction of large chunks of wireless spectrum could change the nature of mobility.
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A bidder on Thursday offered $4.71  billion for a key piece of wireless airwaves being auctioned by  the U.S. government, surpassing a minimum bid requirement and  triggering a condition that the spectrum be accessible to any  device or software application.
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A multi-billion pound auction of  airwaves for a new wave of digital services is announced by Ofcom.
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Blog: The FCC is writing rules to determine how to use extremely valuable wireless spectrum that will be auctioned in September to the highest bidder.
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Blog: Search giant announces it's participating in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming wireless spectrum 700MHz band auction--but there's a catch.
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At the close of the first full day of&#160;bidding for 700MHz wireless spectrum&#160;Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission reported nearly $2.8 billion in provisional winning bids.There were 1,122 new bids filed in the second of two rounds that was held in the afternoon. The total value of all provisional bid winners jumped 15 percent from the morning bidding round, when $2.4 billion was offered.A total of 1,099 licenses can be bid upon, although only 902 had received bids by the end of the day.All the bids are filed anonymously and bidders are prohibited from publicly discussing their bids in an effort to reduce anticompetitive behavior, the FCC said.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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While an auction is underway for a large chunk of wireless spectrum in the 700MHz range, the FCC approved a separate deal enabling AT&T to acquire similar wireless spectrum from another owner.