The Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing spectrum auction somehow made it through this week with only a handful of bids in its most recent rounds. Should the auction make it to its weekend break, the FCC looks set to promote a swift end to the Auction 97 proceedings next week.
The auction proceedings managed to limp over the $44.7 billion mark in total potential winning bids during the week, extending the event’s record haul. This week’s activity looked limited to just a fraction of the 1,614 total spectrum licenses up for bid, with some rounds seeing single-digit numbers of new bids. That dearth of activity is common as a spectrum auction comes to its end, with the FCC late last week increasing the number of rounds per day from 10 to 14 and cutting each round from 15 minutes to just 10 minutes.
The licenses up for bid are spread across the 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum bands known as AWS-3. The licenses include three 5×5 megahertz licenses (G-, H- and I-Blocks) and a single 10×10 megahertz license (J-Block). The G-Block licenses are carved into commercial market area-sized licenses, which total 734 licenses covering the country. The remaining blocks are economic area-sized that will total 176 licenses covering the country. The 15 megahertz of unpaired spectrum is split into two licenses, one with 5 megahertz of total spectrum parsed out on an EA basis, and the other with 10 megahertz of spectrum also in an EA configuration.
Preparing for the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the FCC curtailed bidding activity, with just five rounds scheduled for today and plans to re-start the proceedings next Tuesday should activity continue past today. If bidders are still active next week, the FCC said it will move the proceedings to its “stage four” requirements that requires bidders to be active on 100% of its bidding eligibility in each round.
“If a bidder’s provisionally winning bids do not satisfy the 100% activity requirement and the bidder does not place any additional bids, the FCC Auction System will automatically apply an activity rule waiver on the bidder’s behalf,” the FCC noted. “If the bidder does not have any waivers remaining, its current bidding eligibility will be permanently reduced, possibly curtailing or eliminating its ability to place additional bids in the auction.”
Auction 97 is set to conclude when there are no bids in a single round. License winners won’t be known until after the auction concludes. Participants in Auction 97 include Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile US and Dish Network.
RCR Wireless News spoke with Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, about the FCC’s ongoing Auction 97 spectrum bidding. Entner noted that the auction’s record haul shows signs of insecurity on the side of mobile operators that are unsure how current government debate over broadband regulations could impact their operations.
Bill Ho, founder and lead analyst at 556 Ventures, spoke with RCR Wireless News about how license winners in the FCC’s Auction 97 proceedings could offset some of the high costs associated with those AWS-3 licenses with lower costs tied to current network deployments using spectrum in the AWS-1 band.
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