Next Phase of 3.45 GHz Auction Likely Short, May Be Interesting
The FCC’s 3.45 GHz auction ended Tuesday after 151 rounds, closing at nearly $21.9 billion (see 2111160070), the third-highest spectrum auction haul in FCC history. Bidders won 4,041 of the 4,060 available generic blocks. Analysts disagreed about how much interest…
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there will be in the second phase where winners now have the opportunity to bid for frequency-specific licenses. The bids reflect an average price of 72 cents/MHz/POP, tweeted LightShed’s Walter Piecyk. “Assignment phase won't likely add much more $ or take too long,” he said: “We could find out who won this stuff by January.” The end was “anticlimactic” since bids rose above $21 billion Oct. 28 “which means that 78 rounds have passed where the incremental dollars gained were relatively small (at least for spectrum auctions),” blogged Sasha Javid, BitPath chief operating officer. The assignment stage shouldn’t mean significant extra dollars “given the way the auction is structured (typically less than 1% in additional proceeds),” but “we may see a little more activity than usual,” he said: “The coordination requirements with the DoD have created some differences between the blocks that were not fully captured in the categories created by the FCC.” Which big bidder dropped out in round 10 remains a mystery, though it looks increasingly less like Dish Network, he said. It also took longer than any other clock auction, and it’s unclear why the FCC didn’t do more to speed up bidding, Javid said.