The 700 MHz auctions are over and AT&T and Verizon Wireless emerged as the biggest winners of the prized broadband spectrum. To no one's surprise, Verizon Wireless won the so-called C block licenses, edging out Google for the licenses that are subject to open access requirements.
I've taken a quick look at the winners (license-by-license list here), aggregated the combined amounts spent and produced a table (after the jump) that sorts the winners from highest (Verizon Wireless at $9.4 billtion) to the smallest (AST Telecom in American Samoa at $20,000).
A few interesting quick points, aside from the obvious big dollar spends by AT&T and Verizon:
--Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures ranked 10th in terms of total dollars spent, with the Microsoft co-founder's company bidding around $113 million for licenses in Portland, Salem (WA/OR) and Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA.
--Despite the fact that the top cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Cable weren't bidders in this auction, cable companies won more than $400 million in bids. In addition to Vulcan (which also control cable operator Charter Communications), Cox ($304.6 million), Bend Cable ($6.7 million), Bresnan Communications ($3.9 million) and Cable Montana ($1.8 million) were among the cable-related winners.
--Someone, an individual named David Miller, bid nearly $8 million for 16 licenses in mostly small markets such as Johnstown, Pa, Briscoe, TX and Jaspar, GA. Who is this guy? A Google search produced no useful information.
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:13 PM|Comments(1)
It's a little curious. After all Chairman Martin's talk about the benefits to consumers the auction would bring he rigs it so the incumbents still manage to win the majority of the spectrum. The Chairman's open-access requirements are so weak that any lawyer (and Verizon has plenty) worth his salt will be able to craft a policy, which manages to close the network and not bring any scrutiny from the Commission. But because of the open access requirements, the Chairman set the reserve price for the C block lower that it probably should have been, allowing Verizon to pick it up cheaper.
As for the A and B block, the open access requirements on the C block also made them more attractive to incumbents, which forced out the smaller, local wireless providers that could offer an alternative to the bells in certain markets. It's a shame, that we were sold by Chairman Martin on the auction rules' benefits to consumers but all we got was more of the same.
Posted by: Mike at March 21, 2008 3:50 PM
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