Who are these people, who might "help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition"?
I get your sarcasm in that you clearly seem to think that everyone just wants to lock everyone else in differently, but at least, the other envisioned use for this spectrum was, in fact, similar to WiFi today. Unlicensed use by spec compliant devices.
I don't think you can reasonably argue that 2.4ghz/5ghz wifi would have been better off being auctioned off.
In fact, wifi would be even better had it had more spectrum to work with.
It seems like such a hands off approach to spectrum that is meant to cover a larger area could lead to a situation where it's defacto assigned to whoever deployed in an area first, because deploying additional infrastructure makes no sense due to congestion.
Ideally, the FCC. By licensing the spectrum to smaller providers with guarantees for service (e.g. we connect X customers in Y years or forfeit the license) and at very affordable rates (or free).
Except the new management at the FCC doesn't seem to be at all concerned with making things better for the average citizen...
Spectrum auctions were a good model when the FCC started doing them. Today we have the technology for devices to mediate spectrum use among themselves (maybe following very high level regulatory guidelines). To use an analogy: you don't "allocate road" to cars. You let drivers figure it out themselves against a background of rules for dealing with conflicts (e.g. Right of way).
Given that it doesn't go as far as to say "most analysts had expected substantially more", it seems plausible that this the result is in fact in line with expectations.
I'm a bit lazy ATM, but when this boondoggle was sold to congress, the median forecast was done and was much higher. The broadcasters also were forecasting, as part of their earnings, much higher numbers.
The smaller players were the ones primarily interested in this auction, allowing them to roll more coverage to rural areas with less towers.
Most of the spectrum has some build-out requirement, so no.. it wouldn't make much sense for a company to sink $20billion into it to prevent others from using it.
There's other ways to screw over owners of spectrum. Follow the history of the 700A spectrum in the US. AT&T owned most of the lower 700mhz licenses (B and C but not A: that was T-Mobile and other rural carriers). Someone got someone to issue a report saying 700A might interfere with channel 51 television broadcasters. AT&T and the vendors created a subset band called band 17 that was wholly incompatible. This essentially screwed over the other carriers and caused a multi-year delay in band 12 deployment in the US.
Article on it: http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-report/will-fcc-requir... FCC report on the topic: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7021920804.pdf
I guess the analysts don't realize that a lot of these guys don't need tons more spectrum, they just want to prevent others from using it.
Don't worry though, our FCC chief is on it: "FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the closing of bidding is a "major milestone," adding the spectrum will boost wireless service."
No idea how, since even with the fcc rules around use, they'll do pretty much nothing.
Hey, you know what also would have boosted it? Having the people who actually gave a crap, and were trying to make wireless available to everyone by using this, do it. Or worse, we'll see wonderful devices that only work with specific carriers.
To be fair though, congress literally forced them to auction it after massive lobbying from telcos and isps. I'm sure though, that those same congressman will not remember to ask why the hell the auction did so badly if they needed the spectrum so much.
This spectrum all would have been better off in the hands of people trying to actually boost our economy, and it would have been worth a lot more in 20b to help free people from the iron grip of broadband non-competition.