U.S. Cellular Proposing Point System for Allocation of Licenses Won in Incentive Auction
U.S. Cellular representatives elaborated on the carrier’s proposal for a point system to help determine which licenses in the 600 MHz band a bidder will be assigned after the TV incentive auction. Northwestern University professor Robert Weller made the proposal…
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in a note attached to a March ex parte filing by U.S. Cellular. “To allow bidders to express preferences without generating payments, the FCC could allocate a supply of, say, 1000 bidding ‘points’ to each bidder,” Weller suggested. “Let the bidders allocate these points across assignments, in order to indicate their preferences. Then either choose an assignment which maximizes some objective function which incorporates the point allocations, or resolve the assignment as if the points were bid amounts, but collect no payments (many colleges handle the allocation of seats in popular courses in this manner).” In the meeting last week, U.S. Cellular argued that the point system would be doable. The system “could be implemented without informing bidders of the spectrum block assignments that remain feasible for them after the auction system has optimized for the ... objectives proposed by the Commission in the Procedures PN,” the carrier said. “Our proposed ‘point system’ likely would not result in a large number of ties after bidders have expressed their preferences for particular spectrum blocks in a” particular market, said the filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268.