The second day of five-round bidding in the Federal Communications Commission’s H-block auction 96 ended with just 19 licenses still FCC-held, and a new bidding total of $781 million.
The 23 auction participants had declined to bid on 40 licenses by the end of Tuesday, and halved that number during Wednesday’s bidding.
The latest high bid on the New York economic area license is $170.4 million, up from a final bid Tuesday of $148.17 million. The Los Angeles EA now stands at a high bid of  $103 million, after ending Tuesday at $90 million.
Round 22, the last round of Wednesday’s bidding, was particularly busy with competition for small metro markets and rural markets. Some of the notable Round 22 bids included new high bids for markets ranging from Houston, Tex. ($14.7 million) and Atlanta, Ga. ($7.9 million) all the way down to Lubbock, Tex. ($75,000), Redding, Calif. ($34,000).
Wednesday also saw competition for the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose EA heat up as the license nearly doubled in price over the course of the day, going from $22.77 million at the end of bidding on Tuesday to $43.9 million by the end of Wednesday. Chicago’s EA also saw a significant jump in bidding during Wednesday, starting the day at $66.7 million and ending with a high bid of $87.2 million.
The licenses included in Auction 96 include 10 megahertz of spectrum in the upper 1.9 GHz. A total of 23 entities had qualified to participate in the auction process, though none of the nation’s larger wireless carriers are participating. The FCC is not releasing the names of the entities that have placed high bids until the auction process concludes.
H-Block license winners will be required to meet build out requirements of 40% population coverage within four years and 70% coverage within 10 years.
The top 10 high bids as of the close of bidding Wednesday were:
- New York City EA: $170.4 million
- Los Angeles EA: $103 million
- Chicago EA: $87.2 million
- Washington D.C.-Baltimore EA: $56.3 million
- Boston EA: $47.2 million
- Dallas-Fort Worth EA: $44.8 million
- San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose EA: $43.9 million
- Tampa EA: $29.6 million
- Houston-Galveston: $14.7 million
- Philadelphia EA: $12.4 million
