Even though the personal communications services auctions are designed to make money for the government, some entrepreneurs are finding their own ways to financially benefit from the auctions-by packaging auction information.
Several engineering and wireless service groups have joined the business of auctions by offering round-by-round reporting at package prices ranging from $3,500 to $7,500.
The Federal Communications Commission releases raw auction data daily on its electronic bulletin board. Auction reporting firms pull the information off the Internet and spin it through their own software to create sellable reports.
“The raw data is not user friendly. It just gives you numbers, not identities,” said Mehran Nazari, a consulting engineer with Lukas, McGowan, Nace & Gutierrez. The engineering/law firm offers spreadsheet auction reports by fax for $10 a round. Lukas McGowan taps into auction data through a 900-telephone number offered by the FCC.
“The 1-900 number is $2.50 a minute but you get better data. Once you download, it still needs a little manipulation, but you can respond to the client with a report as quickly as possible. Our intention isn’t really to make money, but to keep clients in our shop and tap into a new client base,” Nazari said.
Engineers at Moffet, Larson & Johnson Inc. of Arlington, Va., created auction tracking software for the previous auction of PCS licenses for internal use only for MLJ clients. For the current auction, MLJ is offering the service publicly to investment companies, the media, other engineering firms and C-block bidders. A complete package of auction reports and Top 10 bidder maps for every round runs $7,500. Twenty pages of Top 10 bidder maps are $35 per round. Ten pages of auction reports sorted by major trading area/basic trading area are $20 per round. Auction reports sorted by bidder are $20 per round.
BellSouth Personal Communications Inc. has formed PCS Auction Reporting Services, which offers a basic package for $7,055. The package includes pre-auction and post-auction analyses as well as reports on the eligibility of bidders, bid amount analysis by bidder and license, summary of high bids for each license and summary of the activity of bidders nationwide.
BellSouth, with the help of a software firm, created a proprietary software program that puts raw bidding data into various formats. BellSouth first used the program when it bid in the auction of narrowband PCS licenses in the fall of 1994, and again when it participated in the A- and B-block broadband PCS auction completed in the spring of 1995.
BellSouth is a bidder in the ongoing C-block auction through its partner Cook Inlet Region; consequently, BellSouth’s reporting service won’t be available to groups whose application indicated an intent to bid on markets that overlap those in which Cook Inlet BellSouth has an interest, said Carlton Hill, director of auctions for BellSouth Personal Communications Services Inc.
“This service gives us the opportunity to offset the cost of developing software,” Hill said.
The PCS Group, Dallas, also is providing a round-by-round auction tracking service with tracking models developed by Dallas-based Impulse Telecommunications. Cost is $15 per round for individual results by BTA or bidder, or $25 per round for both results. Entire auction packages run $2,000 to $3,500.
EDR Wireless Group, which has created the PCS Scorekeeper system of wall maps and source books, provides customers with software to handle round-by-round auction tracking data. “We think these are sophisticated players that want to do their own analysis, so we give them the tools,” said Mark Bennett, president of EDR Corp.
