AUCTION NEWS: Cable companies gaining steam

WASHINGTON—Some of the players who were squeezed out of regional spectrum licenses early in the auction seem to be making up the loss with dozens of smaller geographic licenses.

The joint venture among Sprint Nextel Corp. and four cable companies had high bids of $1.9 billion on 124 spectrum licenses around the country at the end of round 42. They’ve picked up most of those licenses in recent rounds, and the majority of those licenses have not received competing bids in recent rounds.

Meanwhile, NextWave Telecom Inc.-backed AWS Wireless—which made a splash bidding on licenses for a national footprint in early rounds, only to be shut out of those licenses by big-bidding cellular companies—has been steadily picking up smaller licenses in recent rounds. As of round 42, NextWave had posted high bids totaling $88 million on 133 licenses, mostly 20-megahertz A-block and 10-megahertz C-block licenses.

The number of total bids per round continues to hover near 300 in the advanced wireless services spectrum auction, while the number of eligible bidders continues to be whittled away. From the 168 original eligible bidders, only 126 remained at the end of round 42.

Among wireless carriers, Leap Wireless International Inc. had high bids worth $767 million on 70 licenses at the end of round 42, plus a high bid on a regional Great Lakes licenses for $365 million from Leap-backed Denali Spectrum Licenses L.L.C. MetroPCS Inc., meanwhile, has two regional licenses under its belt and has been vying for additional licenses in Tampa, Fla.; New York City; Dallas; and Detroit. In round 42, MetroPCS had five high bids for which it had committed $1.4 billion.

Cingular Wireless L.L.C. had high bids totaling $1.2 billion for 40 licenses as of round 42.

The auction has raised more than $13 billion total so far, and only 130 of the 1,122 licenses on the auction block have not yet received bids.