Big markets continue to feed record-setting auction
Bidders in the Federal Communications Commission’s Auction 97 look to be parsing back activity heading into the upcoming holiday break, with total new bids per round falling below $500 million. Still a large chunk of change, but less than half the $1 billion-plus in per-round bidding seen through the opening two-dozen rounds.
The past four rounds added nearly $2 billion to the auction’s total purse, which after this morning’s round 32 stood at just over $36.4 billion. The latest round included 135 new bids, which tacked on $436 million in total potential winning bids.
Licenses centered on New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago continue to see strong interest, with several of the licenses receiving at least one new bid per round over the past day. At the end of round 32, the J-Block license covering New York City stood at more than $2.2 billion, having received two new bids, which would seem to indicate that two well-funded entities are caught up in a bidding war for that 20 megahertz of spectrum. The FCC is keeping bidder identities secret until the auction ends.
J-Block licenses covering Los Angeles and Chicago also received one new bid each during the latest round, pushing the Los Angeles license to $1.86 billion and the Chicago license to $1.24 billion. A G-Block license centered on Pittsfield, Mass., received the most activity in the latest round with three new bids.
The Auction 97 licenses split up a total of 65 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.7/2.1 GHz bands – also known as the advanced wireless services-3 band – with 50 megahertz set aside in paired bands typically used by mobile operators. The paired licenses will include three 5×5 megahertz licenses (G-, H- and I-Blocks) and a single 10×10 megahertz license (J-Block). The G-Block licenses are carved into commercial market area-sized licenses, which total 734 licenses covering the country. The remaining blocks are economic area-sized that will total 176 licenses covering the country. The 15 megahertz of unpaired spectrum is split into two licenses, one with 5 megahertz of total spectrum parsed out on an EA basis, and the other with 10 megahertz of spectrum also in an EA configuration.
Twenty-four licenses have been sent back to the FCC, mixed between G-, H- and I-Blocks.
Despite the relative slowdown in new money per round, the FCC is sticking with its current schedule through the upcoming holiday break. The FCC said that it will hold just a pair of one-hour bidding rounds on Wednesday with the last scheduled to end at 1 p.m. EST, before taking a four-day break for the Thanksgiving holiday. The auction is set to resume on Dec. 1 with four, one-hour rounds set to begin at 10 a.m. EST.
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