FCC attempts to spur AWS auction action

WASHINGTON—In a sign that the auction is drawing nearer to conclusion, the Federal Communications Commission increased the number of bidding rounds per day from 4 to 6. The auction has garnered nearly $13.6 billion in bids following round 58, though the number of bids per round has fallen by half to around 150 bids per round.

NextWave Telecom Inc.’s bidding entity continues to lead the advanced wireless service auction in the number of individual licenses on which it has high bids: 153 total, covering a population of about 67 million people. NextWave had bid about $112 million for those licenses as of round 55 of the auction. The company outbid Cingular Wireless L.L.C. in round 55 for spectrum covering Mobile, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss.; Cingular, meanwhile, outbid Leap Wireless International Inc. in the latest round for spectrum in Rochester, N.Y.; Minneapolis-St. Paul; and Norfolk-Virginia Beach, Va.

The joint venture between Sprint Nextel Corp. and several cable companies held nearly 130 licenses worth $2.3 billion at the end of the latest round.

As of round 55, the auction had raised nearly $13.6 billion. Only about 100 of the original 1,122 licenses up for auction have not yet received any bids. The number of eligible bidders has dropped to 118, and 151 new bids were placed in round 55.

Bidders in the advanced wireless spectrum auction are paying about 52 cents per megahertz of spectrum per potential customer on average as of round 54, according to figures provided by spectrum consultancy firm WW Associates.

The average price-per-MHz-per-pop for regional licenses is about 66 cents, and the figures for smaller geographic licenses are typically less, according to statistics from Jim Wiesenberg, principal of WW Associates. For the 352 Economic Area licenses, the average cost per-MHz-per-pop is 44 cents, and for the 734, 20-megahertz Cellular Market Areas around the country, the average is 37 cents per-MHz-per-pop.

Among the 10 most expensive regional licenses, the costs range from $1.33-per-MHz-per-pop for the 20-megahertz Northeast regional license that has garnered a high bid of $1.3 billion, to 53 cents per-MHz-per-pop for the Great Lakes regional F-block license. Both bids were placed by Verizon Wireless and have remained unchallenged for more than three dozen rounds.

Even some geographically small or rural licenses are exceeding the average cost as competitors bid them up. For example, the Texas-15 license covering about 194,000 people was bid up to about 73 cents per-MHz-per-pop and is currently held by Hill Country Telephone Cooperative Inc.; and the Iowa-13 A-block license has been bid up about 60 cents per-MHz-per-pop and has been held by FMTC Wireless Inc. for the last four rounds of bidding.