Satellite TV Companies First Wireless Auction Casualties
from the fuzzy-reception dept
The FCC's Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction is chugging right along, with bidding up to a total of nearly $9 billion after Tuesday's rounds. There's not been much going on beyond the usual round-by-round one-upping between the major players, with Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile leading the way, but Tuesday did see what essentially amounts to the exit of satellite providers DirecTV and Echostar from the auction. The companies, which had joined together to bid, had made a lot of noise before the auction about their wireless broadband plans, but apparently finally realized that the billion dollars they were talking about spending wouldn't get them very far, with bids on the 10 MHz regional licenses taking the total for nationwide coverage over $4 billion. So what's next for the satellite companies? They could wait until next year and bid on 700 MHz spectrum, but that won't be available for use until 2009, and could fetch an even higher price than the AWS spectrum, since it's regarded as better. What's more likely is that they'll strike up a partnership with a wireless broadband provider -- rumors about a deal with Clearwire have been fairly persistent.
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I just wanted to be the first to say nothing, sorry.
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soo..
where do these silly billions go?
Step 1:Fcc created to "protect" airwaves.
Step 2:Fcc decides "all your spectrum are belong to us"
Step 3:Profit?
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FCC is n00blet. I agree with Tek'a. It really is just a game of taking existing things, declaring ownership, then selling and making money.
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New auctioning
Last I heard was that the Government wants to hose online auctions for selling various frequencies to the general public. It looks like the take off will be sometime in early 2008.
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