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Bidding slowed down in the AWS auction on Friday, reports Phone Scoop. The FCC says winning bid totals have almost tripled from the first day to nearly $2 billion total today, but the number of bids per round has slowed to a quarter of its original pace.
So far, six of the original 168 qualified bidders have dropped out of the auction. The bidding has slowed from 731 bids in the first round to 223 in the third and 148 in the sixth and latest round of bidding. Of the 1,122 licenses on the auction block, 523 have received bids and nearly 600 have not.
AWS Wireless, a unit of NextWave Telecom, made three of the highest bids in the sixth round, capturing—at least temporarily—the Great Lakes regional 20-megahertz license as well as a 20-MHz license that covers 31 million pops in the Mississippi Valley and another that covers about 50 million pops in the West.
DirecTV and EchoStar, bidding as Wireless DBS, are the current high bidders on four licenses covering Alaska and Hawaii, as well as a 10-MHz license in the Northeast region that covers 50 million pops.
Sprint Nextel Corp. and its four cable partners, bidding as SpectrumCo, are high bidders on five licenses that cover Hawaii, as well as the Western, Central and Southeast regions of the United States. The regional licenses are 10-MHz D-blocks.
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| Bidders |
Net total of high bids |
| 1. AWS Wireless |
$344 million |
| 2. MetroPCS |
$244 million |
| 3. Cricket |
$230 million |
| 4. Cingular |
$168 million |
| 5. T-Mobile |
$168 million |
| 6. SpectrumCo |
$150 million |
| 7. Dolan Family |
$143 million |
| 8. Wireless DBS |
$61 million |
| 9. Triad |
$24 million |
| 10. Antares Holdings |
$16 million |
| Click here (pdf) to find out who is backing these bidders. |
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The auction will not end until there is not a single bid for an entire round. Although there is significant competition for some licenses, such as the large regional blocks, action is likely to heat up again on more lots as bidding slows even further, similar to last minute bidding wars on eBay., reports Phone Scoop.
T-Mobile has fallen from its spot as the dollar leader but is still ahead in number of large licenses. T-Mobile has locked up many metro area licenses for now while competition is focused on large regional licenses reclaimed from NextWave after they defaulted on payment for the spectrum after the last (PCS) auction.
WHAT ARE THEY BIDDING FOR?
The AWS Band, Auction No. 66 will offer 1,122 licenses covering various size regions.
The 12 Regional Economic Area Grouping (REAG) are the largest, with 36 licenses (12 regions X 3 spectrum blocks). Those licenses cover several states, some nearly the size of time zones. The 352 Economic Areas (EA) are closer to the size of multiple county regions and finally the 734 Cellular Market Area (CMA) licenses cover metropolitan areas.
The spectrum is broken up into 7 blocks: A, B, C, D, E and F. Each block includes spectrum for an uplink (in the 1710-1755 MHz band) and downlink (2110-2155 MHz band).
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- Block F includes 12 Regional Economic Area Grouping (REAG) licenses, each one with 20 MHz of spectrum. These licenses will probably attract the most money because they cover the largest geographic area and include the most spectrum. Click here for a map of the 12 F block licenses for sale.
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- Block D and E both include 12 Regional Economic Area Grouping (REAG) licenses with 10 MHz of spectrum. These are valuable too because they cover such a vast amount of land, but they only include 10 MHz of spectrum whereas Block F includes 20 MHz of spectrum. Click here for a map of the D and E block licenses for sale.
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- Block C includes 176 Economic Area (EA) licenses with 10 MHz of spectrum. Click here for a map of the C block licenses for sale.
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- Block B includes 176 Economic Area (EA) licenses with 20 MHz of spectrum. Click here for a map of the B block licenses for sale.
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- Block A includes 734 Cellular Market Area (CMA) licenses with 20 MHz of spectrum. These licenses will probably attract the least amount of money because they cover much smaller geographic areas. However, some notable licenses in this block include New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Click here for a map of the A block licenses for sale.
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RCR Wireless has full AWS auction coverage. Katie Fehrenbacher at GigOm has a recap of the action.
Read more at: .
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