WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has completed the re-auction of 356 PCS licenses in the United States.
Licenses had to be re-auctioned after several of the original bidders were unable to pay for the licenses they won in 1996 and 1997. The three largest bidders in the original auction-GWI, NextWave and Pocket-each filed for bankruptcy after the auction closed.
GSM carriers were considered the biggest beneficiaries of the re-auction because they were able to fill in major coverage gaps in the nationwide GSM system. GSM carrier Cook Inlet/VoiceStream PCS, which is backed by Western Wireless, picked up licenses in Chicago and Dallas. Omnipoint, which also uses GSM technology, won licenses in Detroit and St. Louis.
Other prominent winners in the re-auction included Leap Wireless, a spin-off of Qualcomm Inc., as well as ABC Wireless.
The original C-block auction netted the U.S. Treasury US$10.2 billion for the licenses. Bids totaled US$412.8 million during the re-auction.
It is difficult to compare the original auction with the re-auction based on price per potential subscriber, called price per “pop” in the U.S. market, because several of the 30 megahertz licenses were partitioned, with only half of the spectrum being re-auctioned. However some analysts estimate the price per pop during the re-auction falls somewhere between a few cents and a few dollars per pop, compared with an average per-pop bid of US$40 during the original auction.
