IP Democracy: Broadband Wireless Spectrum Bidders: Round One


spectrumissues.jpgKatie Fehrenbacher over at GigaOm continues her bloodhound reporting on the broadband wireless spectrum auctions. Today she has an excellent summary of the first round qualified bidders in what could be a pivotal event in the development of communications competition, namely the allocation of advanced wireless spectrum.

I’ve taken Katie’s summary and put it in table format (see below). As expected, the DBS guys were qualified to bid on the licenses, but it’s interesting to note that a consortium encompassing DirecTV/EchoStar made one of the largest upfront payments, around $973 million or close to a billion dollars, in their effort to get a hold of the valuable, invisible real estate. As Katie points out, this probably reflects the satellite operators’ desperation to gain a terrestrial foothold.

The big cable group bidding, covering Comcast, Time Warner and Cox, the top three operators in the nation, put up around $638 million to get a hold of the spectrum. One interesting development flagged by Katie, BPL company Current Communications, which counts EarthLink and Google as backers, was found not qualified to bid.

Selected AWS Qualified Bidders
Bidder Affiliated With Amount Bid ($ mil.)
Wireless DBS EchoStar/DirecTV/News Corp.  $    972.55
SpectrumCo Comcast/Cox/Time Warner/Brighthouse  $    637.71
Dolan Family Cablevision Systems  $    149.48
Washington Post CableOne  $         3.50
T-Mobile T-Mobile  $    583.52
Cingular Cingular  $    500.00
Verizon Verizon  $    383.34
Bend Cable  Charter Comm./Paul Allen  $         0.18
NextWave Telecom NextWave Telecom  $    142.00
Source:  Gigaom.


Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 30, 2006 2:02 PM to IP Democracy