Aug. 11, 2006

T-Mobile USA is dominating the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum auction after three rounds in terms of sheer dollars, with $226.6 million in bids so far.

The carrier is the high bidder on 25 spectrum licenses covering 235 million potential customers.

Satellite providers EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV have been quite active as well, as their bidding joint venture—called Wireless DBS L.L.C.—is the high bidder on 10 licenses covering 230 million pops.

The companies’ bids totaled nearly $161 million at the end of the third round.

BIDDING SUMMARY:

Gross Bids: $1,097,567,600
Net Bids: $1,059,439,395
New Bids: 223
Withdrawn Bids: 0
Proactive Waivers: 5
Bidders that Reduced Eligibility: 9
Licenses with Provisionally Winning Bids: 516
FCC Held Licenses: 606
Eligible Bidders: 168

The joint venture between Sprint Nextel Corp. and four cable companies has bid the third-largest amount so far at $150.3 million. The companies’ joint venture, called SpectrumCo L.L.C., is the high bidder on five licenses covering 181.6 million pops in the Central, West and Southeast regions, plus Hawaii.

The most highly-coveted license appears to be the F-block license for the Great Lakes region, which will give the winner 20 megahertz of spectrum covering 58 million pops.

The license has received the highest bids of any single license in each round, with a bid amount totaling almost $83 million in the third round. Barat Wireless L.P., backed by U.S. Cellular Corp., is the current high bidder on that spectrum; T-Mobile USA and the Echostar/DirecTV partnership were high bidders in the two earlier rounds.

Bidding has slowed considerably since the first round: The auction had 731 bids in the first round, 224 in the second and 223 in the third round. Around 600 licenses have not yet received any bids.

Verizon Wireless is currently the high bidder on a pair of 20 MHz licenses, one covering about 50 million pops in the Southeast and another covering about 31 million pops in the Mississippi Valley region. Cingular Wireless L.L.C. is the current high bidder on two 10 MHz licenses, one in Chicago and another in New York City.

Among the top 10 bidders as ranked by the number of winning bids so far, designated entity Red Rock Spectrum Holdings Inc. holds the lead as the high bidder on 36 licenses covering 7.1 million pops.

Louisiana-based rural telecom company CenturyTel Inc. is currently the high bidder on 34 licenses covering about 9 million pops, and Cable One Inc. is the highest bidder on 17 licenses covering nearly 3 million pops.

Source: RCR News