AUCTION NEWS: NextWave strikes back

WASHINGTON—NextWave Telecom Inc.-backed AWS Wireless Inc. made three of the highest bids in the sixth round of the advanced wireless services spectrum auction, capturing—at least temporarily—the highly coveted 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.

The three bids total about $344 million.

Leap Wireless International Inc. knocked off Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s fifth-round high bid for the 20-MHz F-block license for the Northeast region with a new high bid of $130.7 million. Leap also was the high bidder for the Central F-block license, which covers 40 million pops.

As of the sixth round, the high bids for the six F-block licenses that cover the continental United States belonged to NextWave (three F-block licenses), Leap (two licenses), and Cingular (one license).

Cingular is, as of the sixth round, the high bidder on five licenses, including a 20-MHz block in the Southeast, a 10-MHz block in the Mississippi Valley, and licenses covering the metropolitan areas of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, and Miami-Ft. Lauderdale.

The satellite and cable consortiums, who have been closely watched in the bidding, managed to hang onto a few licenses in the latest round of bidding. DirecTV and EchoStar Communications Corp. 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 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.

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.