WASHINGTON-While it may not be an auctionwide pattern, bidders on the largest basic trading areas (ranked by pop) in the D-, E- and F-block personal communications services auction tend to be the heavy financial hitters, even if some of the prices being offered do not reflect this.
At the end of Round 61, the three New York City BTA licenses were held by OPCSE-Galloway Consortium (with Omnipoint as a partner), AT&T Wireless PCS Inc. and Northcoast Operating Co. Inc. (backed by the Dolan family). High bidders for Los Angeles were AT&T Wireless, Rivgam Communicators L.L.C. (Mario Gabelli and Robert Dolan) and AerForce Communications. Two Chicago licenses currently are held by SprintCom Inc. and NextWave Power Partners Inc. holds the third. San Francisco’s D and F markets are NextWave’s and the E market is Rivgam’s. Philadelphia is held by Comcast PCS Communications Inc., Rivgam and NextWave.
BellSouth Wireless Inc., the third largest bidder in terms of total dollar amount, has no holds on licenses in the top six markets.
Net revenues continue to inch toward $2 billion, with $1.79 billion pledged by the end of Round 61. Thus far, the D block is responsible for 42.4 percent of total net revenues, the E block for 41.6 percent and the F block for 15.9 percent.
According to Simmons Associates of Washington, D.C., of the gross revenues risked so far-approximately $2 billion-SprintCom has committed 26 percent of the total; AT&T, 13 percent; BellSouth, 9 percent; Northcoast, 7 percent; Alltel, 6 percent; OPCSE, 5 percent; Next-Wave, 5 percent; Western PCS BTA 1 Corp., 4 percent; Rivgam, 3 percent; Powertel Inc., 2 percent; and all others, the remaining 20 percent. In comparison, AT&T Wireless is active on 17 percent of the pops in play, and OPCSE and SprintCom each are active on 12 percent.
The dropout factor so far in this auction appears to be relatively low. Of the original 153 bidders, only 15 have left the pack: Municipality of Anchorage dba Anchorage Telephone Utility, Southwest Florida PCS Joint Venture, Midwest Wireless Communications L.L.P., Electric Lightwave Inc., Century Communications Corp., St. Joe Communications Inc., Purcell Wireless Inc., NewTelco L.P., Triton Communications Inc., Palmer PCS Co., Liberty Cellular Inc., Rural Cellular Corp., First Wireless Inc., Win Bee Resources Inc. and Personal Communications Network Inc.
Dropping out of the auction was not a traumatic decision for Dennis Miller, president of Midwest Wireless Communications, whose company was targeting markets in which it already has a cellular presence. “As in any auction, the prices for the markets went beyond the value,” he said.
