Slow and low: Auction 73 bidding continues to crawl: E Block may not reach reserve price

Apparently it wasn’t a Super Bowl hangover.

Bidding in the Federal Communication Commission’s 700 MHz spectrum auction continued to slow today as bidders placed only 582 new bids during five rounds, adding just over $113 million to the auction’s total haul. That number is less than half the $270.9 million across 998 bids in four rounds yesterday.

The auction stood at $18.938 billion after round 35.

Click here for complete 700 MHz auction coverage.

Yesterday, the C Block dominated the action when new high potential winning bids were placed on the eight individual C-Block licenses covering the 50 states. The new high bids broke up the package of eight C-Block licenses, which had been the most popular configuration of the C Block since the start of the auction.

There were no new bids on the C Block today; by round 35 there were just 87 new high bids totaling $6.4 million.

Analyst firm Stifel Nicolaus laid out a trio of possible scenarios for the C Block. First, the firm said Verizon Wireless may have used high bids on the regional licenses to usurp Google Inc.’s high bid on the package of licenses. Or, second, Verizon Wireless may have been the high bidder on the package, and it was AT&T Inc. that moved in on the individual licenses in order to drive up the price. Or, finally, it may have been Verizon Wireless or Google that was one of the high bidders on the package of licenses, and that AT&T or Alltel Corp. moved in on the individual licenses in order to boost their regional holdings.

With no new bidding on any of the C-Block licenses today, the firm said scenario No. 1 seems the most likely.

The FCC, in a departure from past practice, is not identifying the names of top bidders at the close of each round. Instead, only the amount of the top bid for particular licenses in each round is publicly disclosed. The anonymous bidding technique is intended to prevent anti-competitive activity during the auction.

E Block worries

The auction’s slowdown could also impact the future of the E-Block licenses, which have yet to hit their reserve price. The unpaired 6 megahertz of spectrum was thought to be attractive to companies looking to deploy one-way, broadcast services similar to Qualcomm Inc.’s MediaFLO service. But if the spectrum fails to meet its reserve price, the E-Block licenses could be back up for auction.

The same may be true for the national commercial-public safety D-Block license, which remained at $472 million, well short of its $1.3 billion reserve price. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin last week said he remained confident a bidder would emerge willing to match the reserve price.