AUCTION NEWS: Verizon stands tall, Dolan Family running out of gas

WASHINGTON—Verizon Wireless appears to be in a bidding war with T-Mobile USA Inc. over the valuable F-block licenses up for grabs in the advanced wireless services spectrum auction. Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel Corp.’s joint venture with four cable companies is focusing on buying spectrum within the footprints of the cable operators. Also, another cable bidder—Dolan Family Holdings L.L.C., backed by CableVision System Corp.’s chairman—appears to be close to dropping out of the auction.

The 25 highest bids placed in the 22nd round of bidding were all from wireless operators, except for three placed by the Sprint Nextel-cable company JV covering licenses in Los Angeles and New York City.

Verizon Wireless made high bids on four of the six 20 megahertz regional F-block licenses; T-mobile USA hung onto the other two, along with 124 other regional and local market licenses. T-Mobile USA bid a total of $3.2 billion in the latest round, and Verizon Wireless bid $2.8 billion on the four F-block licenses.

Charles Dolan’s Dolan Family Holdings bidding entity appears close to dropping out of the auction. The bidding entity dropped from initial bidding eligibility of about $150 million to $71 million in round 18 to less than $2 million in round 22. After provisionally winning as many as nine licenses in earlier rounds, Dolan Family Holdings had no high bids in the two latest rounds of bidding.

Dolan Family Holdings could follow satellite television providers EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV Group Inc., which dropped out of the auction yesterday.

As for other players in round 22, MetroPCS Communications Inc. ended the round with high bids on nine licenses: two 10 megahertz regional licenses in the West and Northeast and market-specific licenses covering cities such as Dallas-Ft. Worth; Flint, Mich.; and Sarasota and Orlando, Fla.

Leap Wireless International Inc. stayed in the game, garnering high bids of $247 million for 29 licenses covering parts of Georgia, Tennessee, California, Arizona and the Carolinas as well as one 10 megahertz license covering the Central region of the United States. Meanwhile, Leap-backed Denali Spectrum License L.L.C. placed two high bids worth about $700 million on a regional 10 megahertz license in the Great Lakes and a New Jersey-New York metro area license.

Other auction action included:

c U.S. Cellular Corp. placed high bids of $232 million for two licenses: one covering the Chicago metro area and parts of Indiana and another regional 10 megahertz license for the Mississippi Valley.

c Dobson Communications Corp. placed high bids of $12.3 million on 25 licenses in New York, Maryland, Alaska and Pennsylvania.

Almost 75 percent of the total 1,122 available licenses have now received bids. More then 260 bids were placed in the 22nd round, and the auction has raised a total of $10.7 billion so far.