It seems like only yesterday my days were filled with nervous anticipation, my nights with restlessness. No, it wasn’t nightmares of another CTIA I.T. show, a reaction to my increasing dependence on Red Bull, or my outlandishly complex plots related to the downfall of my nemesis Mike Dano that had me on edge. It was the countdown for the start of Auction 66. (As a side note, after much deliberation I have now refused to acknowledge the “Advanced Wireless Services” tag given to the auction by the Federal Communications Commission. I find it too vague and it omits the number 66, which seems like a cool number for an auction.)
That eagerness spilled over into my work environment, where I would occasionally yell out updates from the Auction 66 countdown clock the Federal Communications Commission posted on its Web site. (I felt for a while that they put that clock up just to torture me. Damn you Kevin Martin!) My co-workers snickered, my wife again questioned my “stability,” but like a highly trained athlete (or some might say a sleep-deprived gambler) I was too focused to let anything bother me.
And then it was on. For 28 glorious days and through 161 wonderful rounds of bidding, deep-pocketed companies showed that you could put a price on air, and that price was steep. The first few days were like the start of a heavyweight bout, with boxers jousting and jabbing in an attempt to feel out their opponents before unloading the big blows. But within days the cream rose to the top as traditional wireless players began throwing haymakers, and the pretenders were left on the sideline calling for the fight doctor.
In the end, more than $13 billion was bid on licenses covering nearly every square-inch of U.S. soil-though for some odd reason bidders shied away from 35 licenses covering such diverse markets as Guam and Madison, Ark. Go figure.
So as I sat last week reflecting on the glory of Auction 66, I was left trying to comprehend an event that so dominated my obviously pathetic life. My first reactions were that T-Mobile USA Inc.’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom AG, is serious about maintaining its U.S. subsidiary’s place among the elite of the domestic market; Verizon Wireless has never seen spectrum it did not like; and Sprint Nextel Corp., bidding with cable partners, has a spectrum portfolio with depth and breadth second to none.
I was also impressed by the buffet players, Leap Wireless International Inc. and MetroPCS Communications Inc., which together now own at least 10 megahertz of spectrum in nearly all of the top 50 markets and are set to bring their flat-rate, unlimited local calling plans to the masses.
