FCC Ends 700 MHz Auction

Apu writes "Having received bids totaling $19.5 billion over 260 rounds of bidding, the FCC has announced the closing of Auction 73. The Chairman's statement notes that the auction has "raised more money than any [FCC] auction has ever raised" besting the 2006 Advanced Wireless Service-1 auction that raised $13.9 billion and topping the $10.6 billion Congress estimated it would receive for the 700 MHz spectrum. The New York Times reports that "the last bid in the auction was $91,000 for frequencies around Vieques, Puerto Rico." According to the FCC, "eight unsold licenses [...] remain held by the FCC and will again be made available [...] in a future auction." This includes the "D block" which was to be shared by commercial and public safety users and only received a single $472 million bid, below the $1.3 billion reserve price. However, as previously reported, the open access provisions will apply to one-third of the auctioned spectrum as the minimum $4.6 billion bid for the "C" block was received. The names of the winning bidders have not yet been made public."

I will be more curious...

[Ngarrang]

...to see how many of the bid winners manage not to default on their bids and actually deliver a working product.

And regarding the C-Block (?) for shared public/private usage, I am not surprised. As competitive as the telecomms are in wanting to keep their networks just to themselves, who would want to spend billions developing a nationwide network that would have to give free access to public service? Sure, it would be a boon to firefighters and police, but the telecomms don't seem to worry about good or bad PR.

Misspelling

[EXTER]

The summary misspelled "Puerto Rico".

The shutdown of future learning

[downix]

With the erasure of the analog spectrum, a whole range of learned skills will be forgotten, a whole range of home projects will vanish. Once the television spectrum is done, then comes Radio. As a kid, I made my own home AM radios, an incredibly useful tool for the budding EE's in the world. the loss of such profound examples will cut off the joy of home electronic projects to another generation.

$19.5 billion Pffft

[NobleSavage]

$19.5 billion, Sounds like such a small number these days... What is that, a few weeks in Iraq? Or, 1/10 the amount it cost to bail out Bear Sterns?

Re:$19.5 billion Pffft

[smooth wombat]

Or, 1/10 the amount it cost to bail out Bear Sterns?

The government (i.e. the taxpayers) put up $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns and allow JP Morgan to start buying them out. The $19.5 billion is then 2/3 of the price of the bail out.

Granted, moral hazard has all but been abandoned by the supposed experts at the Fed but hey, it's not their money they're using. Besides, couldn't let their buddies have to suffer the slings and arrows of the free market, now could we?