700 MHz auction moves into ‘stage three’: Bids continue to trickle in

The Federal Communications Commission announced it moved the 700 MHz spectrum auction into “stage three” in an effort to speed the proceedings along. Now, bidders must be active on at 98% of their current bidding eligibility in each round.
The FCC moved the auction into “stage two” Feb. 6. The event began Jan. 24.
The move to stage three coincides with the agency increasing the frequency of bidding rounds per day; starting today the FCC said it will conduct 10 rounds per day, each lasting 15 minutes. The move comes just three days after the FCC increased bidding rounds to eight per day.
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Thanks to the FCC’s attempts to speed things up, the auction may well come to a close this week. That would be welcome news to those watching the auction; the FCC will only release the names of winning bidders at the close of the event. For comparison, the FCC’s advanced wireless services auction labored on for 30 more rounds after moving to 10 bidding rounds per day. The FCC then bumped the auction to 14 rounds per day, which brought a quick end to the proceedings.
Interestingly, it seems stage three has served to increase the number of bids per round, perhaps engaging those bidders content to wait patiently on the sidelines. The number of bids per round slowed to nine in round 144, but when stage three kicked in during round 146, the number of bids per round jumped to around two dozen. In round 150 today there were 24 new bids across the A, B and E Blocks.
The FCC racked up $19.573 billion in provisionally winning bids by round 150.