FCC auction bidders named
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Google is one of several nontraditional communications companies planning to bid on 700MHz wireless spectrum. But at this point it's really anyone's game.
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The FCC's online spectrum auction opened this morning with more than 1,800 bids made in the first round at prices ranging from $500 to more than $1 billion for various airwave licenses.
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More than 200 companies qualified to bid in the upcoming auction of public airwaves that could raise as much as $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury. But it's not clear whether any of those companies will fulfill one of the key goals of the auction -- to attract a bidder that would build a wireless...
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The high bids totalled $3.2 billion in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission&#39;s&#160;auction of wireless spectrum licenses in the 700MHz band&#160;after three rounds and a day and a half of bidding.That figure is far short of the $10 billion Congress and the FCC expect to raise in&#160;the auction, which opened Thursday, but bidding could continue for weeks. In most cases, the high bids don&#39;t yet meet the FCC&#39;s reserve price set for minimum winning bids.A fourth round of bidding will happen Friday afternoon.The 700MHz auctions represent the last large chunk of spectrum available for the FCC to auction in the foreseeable future. The spectrum, now used to carry over-the-air television signals, can be used to carry long-range wireless broadband traffic. Consumer groups have said the spectrum represents the &quot;last, best hope&quot; for a nationwide wireless broadband network that competes with cable and telecom broadband services.For sale is 62MHz of spectrum in the 700MHz band. In late 2005, after a decade of debate, Congress passed a law requiring U.S. TV stations to move to all-digital broadcasts and abandon analog spectrum between channels 52 and 69. The deadline for TV stations to end broadcasts in the 700MHz band is February 2009.After three rounds, 906 of the 1,099 available spectrum licenses had bids, with four more licenses receiving bids than at the end of round two late Thursday. High bids had totalled just under $2.8 billion after round 2, and just over $2.4 billion after round one Thursday morning.The top bid after the third round was $1.49 billion for eight of 12 regional licenses in the C block, a 22MHz block of spectrum covering all 50 states. The bidding for those C block licenses was up from $1.24 billion at the end of the second round. The FCC&#39;s reserve price for the C block is $4.6 billion, and the winning bidders of C block spectrum must allow any legal devices to connect to their network, including mobile phones purchased from other carriers.The second highest bid remained $472 million for the D block, a nationwide 10MHz chunk of spectrum to be paired with another 10MHz set aside for public safety agencies. The bidder of the D block would be required to build a national network to be jointly used by public safety agencies and commercial customers. The high bid for the D block has remained unchanged since round one.Bidding in the auction is anonymous.The A block, a 12MHz piece of spectrum covering parts of New York and the northeastern U.S., also generated interest. The high bid was $119.8 million after the third round, up from $100 million after the second round and $83.2 million after the first round. A similar chunk of spectrum in the E block, also covering the same area, has generated a high bid of $59.9 million after the third round.The high bid for a 12MHz block called the B block, for a local New York City license, stood at $85.6 million after rounds two and three.High bids for five blocks in the Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., areas were between $28 million and $55 million after round three.
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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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The bidding topped $3.7 billion on  the second day of the Federal Communications Commission's  auction of government-owned airwaves, but there were no new  suitors Friday for a closely watched block of spectrum to be  shared with public safety agencies.
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As 700MHz auction approaches, groups say some of that space should go to emergency responders. Mobile operators disagree.
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Almost &#36;1 billion in bids were made on Wednesday on the opening day of a U.S. government auction of valuable wireless airwaves, with companies fighting hard for the Los Angeles market.
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Blog: Government officials are 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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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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Wireless carriers planning to offer next-generation wireless services have bid $13.9 billion in a spectrum license auction that ended Monday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said.
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Since its 700-MHz auction began on Jan. 24, the FCC has raised more than $18.8 billion. That well surpasses the agency's own early estimates of attracting between $10-15 billion.
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Several lawmakers protested a spectrum auction proposal from the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), saying his plan could limit the number of bidders and raise costs to consumers.
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The Federal Communications Commission said that, starting Wednesday, new rules will apply that will encourage more bidding and hasten the auctionâs end.
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One of the major questions as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission kicks off a multibillion-dollar spectrum auction Thursday is whether the auction will produce a winning bidder that will challenge telecom and cable-based broadband providers with a national wireless broadband network.Other questions will also be answered in coming weeks as the auctions, for 62MHz of long-range, high-speed spectrum, unfold. Will Google or another bidder buy enough spectrum to launch a &quot;third pipe&quot; broadband network? Will any bidders step forward and pledge to build a nationwide broadband and voice network for emergency response agencies?The bids to watch in the 700MHz auctions are for the C block, a 22MHz band of spectrum broken up into 12 regional licenses, and the D block, 10MHz of auctioned spectrum paired with another 10MHz set aside for a combined national commercial/emergency response agency network. Startup Frontline Wireless, one of the primary backers of the public-private model for an emergency responder network, announced in December that&#160;it had ceased operations.&quot;The pull-out of Frontline leaves the whole D Block auction up in the air,&quot; analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates said in an e-mail. &quot;There is no way to know if a last-minute group will come on board. While the goal of establishing a universal network for public safety/security is a laudable goal, it is not the most lucrative area from a pure business perspective, so it is not clear how much demand there might be or who might step up to the plate to make this work.&quot;The FCC may have made a mistake in adopting the plan by Frontline, a company with former FCC chairman Reed Hundt as its vice chairman, said Carlyn Taylor, a senior managing director in business consultancy FTI&#39;s corporate finance practice.&quot;I&#39;m not sure how well [Frontline&#39;s plan] hung together from a financial standpoint,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;I&#39;m not sure anybody else is going to try to do what Frontline says they were going to do. There doesn&#39;t seem to be anybody else with a similar approach.&quot;If any other company bids on the D block, it will be much less than the FCC would have received without the national public safety network build-out rules, Taylor said.But the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), the nonprofit group of emergency response agency representatives that&#160;controls the public safety portion of the spectrum, said earlier this month it continues to support the FCC plan for the D block. The FCC should &quot;do all that it can&quot; to advance the public-private partnership meant to bring about the nationwide public safety broadband network, said Harlin McEwen, the PSST&#39;s chairman, in a statement. &quot;While it would not be appropriate for the PSST to comment on any potential bidder&#8217;s strategy, we want to restate our enthusiasm for and commitment to what the FCC has done.&quot;In the C block, the FCC required that&#160;winning bidders operate under open-access rules, meaning the winning bidder must allow any legal devices to connect to the network and allow customers to access any legal Web content of their choosing. Google, which pushed for the open-access rules, has&#160;pledged to bid at least $4.6 billion for the C block, and the FCC later set that figure as the minimum price it will accept.FCC rules prohibit potential bidders such as Google from commenting on their spectrum plans in the run-up to the auction. Bidding is anonymous, but the FCC will release some information about the auctions at its auction Web page.But several wireless industry observers have suggested that Google may not want to win the C block spectrum. Google, by getting the FCC to adopt the open-access rules and by pushing Verizon Wireless and AT&amp;T to&#160;open up their current wireless networks to outside devices and applications, has already accomplished much of what it has wanted, Taylor said.&quot;I think it&#39;s fairly widely believed that [Google] doesn&#39;t really want to be the actual carrier,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;That doesn&#39;t mean they still wouldn&#39;t buy spectrum and then work with somebody else who&#39;s a carrier.&quot;A subcontracting arrangement with a wireless carrier would make sense for Google, she said.Blair Levin, a telecom analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus &amp; Co., also doubts Google will be a major player in the C block bidding. With the U.S. stock markets tanking in recent weeks, Google may not want to spend $10 billion to build a national network, he said, referring to the estimated cost.Before the FCC set the auction rules in July, Google had also inquired about the legality of selling spectrum on a wholesale basis. The FCC ruled that such a plan would be legal.In addition to the current wireless giants AT&amp;T and Verizon Wireless, other companies to watch are the cable television providers, satellite TV providers and handset maker Qualcomm, Taylor said. Qualcomm and cable provider Cox were among the 214 bidders approved by the FCC this month.Look for wireless carriers such as AT&amp;T and Verizon to bid defensively, she said. &quot;If the traditional mobile carriers really are the final winners of most of the spectrum, then nothing interesting happens,&quot; she said. &quot;They don&#39;t want to see some major new entrant coming in.&quot;Falling stock prices on Wall Street may discourage some competing bidders, with the auction coming at &quot;precisely a bad time&quot; for investment in a new nationwide network, Taylor said. But these auctions may be the last chance for a third nationwide broadband network, she added.The 700MHz spectrum band carries wireless broadband signals three to four times farther than some higher spectrum bands, making it perfect for long-range broadband networks. &quot;If you&#39;re going to build a green-field network from scratch, you want to build it at low megahertz like this,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;If anybody was seriously considering launching a fully new competitor ... from scratch, this is the chance. There isn&#39;t going to be another one, probably.&quot;
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Online auctioneer eBay  Inc. said on Tuesday it is ready to begin auctioning  advertising airtime on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations,  expanding on an existing plan to sell cable television ads.
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A federal airwaves auction starting today is expected to bring consumers improved wireless broadband services and will likely provide the last opportunity to create a nationwide challenger to the big cellphone companies.