The total bids in the Federal Communications Commission’s auction of H-block spectrum reached $1 billion on Friday, with about $560 million left before the reserve price is met.
There are currently five rounds of bidding per day in Auction 96, and when round 32 closed on Friday there were just two licenses — covering western Oklahoma and Anchorage, Alaska — that had not received bids out of the 176 that the FCC is offering. The FCC has set a reserve price of $1.56 billion.
The hotly contested New York City economic area license remained at a high bid of $217 million and did not receive any new bids during Friday’s rounds. Neither did the Los Angeles EA, which still stands at $131.8 million. In fact, eight out of the top 10 most expensive licenses did not receive any new bids during the last day of this week’s bidding.
That’s not to say Friday was a slow day for the auction. There were 44 new bids during the last round alone, as participants vied for spectrum in multiple Texas markets including Beaumont-Port Arthor ($91,000 high bid), Corpus Christi ($186,000 high bid) and San Antonio ($4.3 million high bid) and small markets such as Charleston, S.C. ($441,000) and Little Rock , Ark. ($1 million). Larger markets that received high bids at the end of Friday included the Philadelphia EA ($37.9 million), Miami-Fort Lauderdale ($20.4 million) and the Detroit EA ($8.4 million).
The Philadelphia license more than doubled in price over the course of the day. It ended Thursday with a high bid of $16.8 million and by the end of Friday had been bid up to $37.9 million. Meanwhile, the Atlanta, Ga. EA received a new high bid of $20.2 million, edging the $20 million high bid for the Houston, Tex. EA out of the top 10 priciest licenses.
The licenses on offer include 10 MHz of spectrum in the upper 1.9 GHz. None of the nation’s largest wireless carriers are participating, but 23 entities have qualified to participate; the FCC is not naming high bidders until the auction process ends.
H-Block license winners will be required to meet build out requirements of 40% population coverage within four years and 70% coverage within 10 years.
The top ten high bids at the end of round 32 are as follows:
- New York City EA: $216.9 million
- Los Angeles EA: $131.8 million
- Chicago EA: $87.2 million
- Washington D.C.-Baltimore EA: $56.3 million
- San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose EA: $49.4 million
- Boston EA: $47.2 million
- Dallas-Fort Worth EA: $44.8 million
- Philadelphia EA: $37.9 million
- Tampa EA: $29.6 million
- Atlanta, Ga. EA: $20.2 million
