Round 12 of the Federal Communications Commission’s Auction 97 of AWS-3 spectrum closed with $10.5 billion in bids, already topping the minimum bid amount set by the FCC. Yesterday’s bidding closed at $8.91 billion. Major East Coast metropolitan areas that drew nine-figure bids during the spectrum auction included Boston; Philadelphia; Atlantic City, N.J.; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; and others.
After the four daily rounds of bidding on Monday, deep-pocketed carriers increased bids by more than $1.38 billion (18.28%) from the Friday round.
The spectrum auction includes a total of 1,614 licenses composed of 50 megahertz of paired licensed spectrum in the 1755-1780/2155-2180 MHz bands and 15 megahertz of unpaired spectrum in the 1695-1710 MHz band.
The FCC set minimum opening bids for paired licenses based on a formula that considers 15 cents per megahertz/per potential customer.
Bidding on a specific license closes when the reserve price is met and, at the same time, after five rounds during which there’s no new bid for that license.
Based on returns from the latest auction round, opening bids for round 12 are well in excess of the potential winning bids in place.
For instance, round 12 of the spectrum auction will open with a minimum bid of $233,987,000 for the densely populated Washington, D.C.-Baltimore metropolitan area; compare that to the potential winning bid of $194,989,000.
Click here for more on how the auction works.
