FCC spectrum auction bidding ends at $19.6B

Re:FCC spectrum auction bidding ends at $19.6B by IBM on Sunday February 12, 2017 @03:35PM (#13630589)

I don't understand, if it would be worth a lot more than $20 billion to someone why aren't they bidding for it? I find it hard to believe that anyone is going to sink $20 billion to "prevent others from using it".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:FCC spectrum auction bidding ends at $19.6B by joecool1029 on Sunday February 12, 2017 @03:49PM (#13630673)

The major players already have enough low-band spectrum. Capacity issues will be solved by densification and securing mid-band spectrum for 4G and high-band spectrum for 5G deploys.

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

[ Parent | on HN ]