Auction 97 nears holiday break
The Federal Communications Commission’s Auction 97 continues to slowly tack on millions of dollars in new bids, as overall bidding activity continues to slow across the FCC spectrum auction.
Through this morning’s round 124, total potential winning bids stood at nearly $44.44 billion, with one license of the 1,614 up for bids remaining without a potential winning bid: the G-Block license centered on San Miguel, Colo. The FCC has attempted to keep bidding activity on track as late last week it bumped bidding activity up to eight, 20-minute rounds per day in a move to hasten the process. Past auctions have moved to as many as 16 rounds per day as they neared completion.
The increase in daily rounds followed a move earlier in the week in pushing Auction 97 to “stage three,” which required bidders to be active on at least 98% of their current bidding eligibility in each round or risk having to use an eligibility waiver or have their bidding eligibility reduced.
The quicker rounds resulted in the number of bids per round dropping just slightly from 44 bids per round under the last day of bidding that included six, 30-minute rounds per day, to 42 bids per round under the first day of the new schedule.
This morning’s opening round was dominated by single bids for a number of G-Block licenses. However, the most expensive license to garner a new bid was the J-Block licenses centered on Sioux Falls, S.D., which is now valued at nearly $5.5 million.
The auction’s biggest sticker remains affixed to the J-Block license centered on New York City, with one lucky bidder having committed more than $2.7 billion for that license. The J-Block license centered on Los Angeles is No. 2 with a nearly $2.1 billion bid, followed by the I-Block license centered on New York City at $1.3 billion. Most of the auction’s most expensive licenses have not received new bids for more than 30 rounds.
The licenses up for bid are spread across the 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum bands known as AWS-3. The licenses 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.
License winners won’t be known until after the auction concludes. Participants include Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile US and Dish Network.
The FCC announced last week that the auction would break for the holidays following the conclusion of activity on Tuesday, with plans to resume bidding on Jan. 5. The auction is set to conclude when there are no bids in a single round. Past auctions have gone at least 161 rounds (Auction 66, AWS-1), while the 700 MHz auction (Auction 73) went to 261 rounds.
Spectrum Financial Partners put together a video showing Auction 97 progress through round 123.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter?
