The New York economic area license continues to be the crown jewel of the Federal Communications Commission’s auction 96, and drew even further away from the rest of the pack on Thursday to end with a high bid of nearly $217 million.
Total bidding in the auction now stands at $913.8 million, with an aggregate reserve set by the FCC of $1.56 billion.
The New York EA covers Northern New Jersey and sections of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont. The price jumped nearly $50 million over the course of the day, after ending Wednesday with a high bid of $170.4 million. The next highest auction bidding has been for the Los Angeles EA license, which covers most of Southern California – except for San Diego – and portions of Arizona. The Los Angeles EA ended Thursday with a high bid of about $132 million, only about 60% of what is being bid for the coveted New York area spectrum. The third and fourth most expensive licenses at this point, covering Chicago and Washington D.C., did not receive new bids on Thursday and still stand at $87.2 million and $56.3 million respectively.
Five rounds of bidding are being held each day at this point in the auction, with round 27 closing out Thursday’s bidding. Round 27 resulted in new high bids for two dozen smaller licenses, ranging from $51,000 for the Salisbury, Md. EA license to $10.8 million for the Minneapolis-St. Paul EA.
Out of 176 licenses being offered, which include 10 MHz of spectrum in the upper 1.9 GHz, only seven remain held by the FCC. None of the nation’s largest wireless carriers are participating, but 23 entities have qualified to participate; the FCC is not naming high bidders until the auction process ends.
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 ten high bids at the end of round 27 are as follows:
- New York City EA: $216.9 million
- Los Angeles EA: $131.8 million
- Chicago EA: $87.2 million
- Washington D.C.-Baltimore EA: $56.3 million
- San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose EA: $49.4 million
- Boston EA: $47.2 million
- Dallas-Fort Worth EA: $44.8 million
- Tampa EA: $29.6 million
- Houston-Galveston: $20.0 million
- Philadelphia EA: $16.8 million
