July 28, 2006

The Federal Communications Commission said late Friday that 168 bidders have qualified to participate in the advanced wireless services auction.

However, the FCC also added that it would not use blind bidding procedures during the duration of the auction.

The auction “will be conducted using the information-disclosure procedures typically used during past FCC auctions,” said the commission.

“The FCC concluded that if this measure of likely competition, or modified-eligibility ratio, is equal to or greater than three, the likely level of competition should be sufficient to make anti-competitive outcomes difficult to sustain".

"Therefore the benefits of publicly revealing information on bidder interests and bidder identities likely would outweigh the potential harms" the FCC said.

Because the modified-eligibility ratio is equal to at least three, this auction will be conducted with the typical disclosure of information from this point forward that is, revealing bidder license selection before the auction, as well as all bids and bidder identities at the end of each round.”

The AWS auction is for 1,122 licenses being sold by the government to offer service in the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands. The auction is scheduled to start Aug. 9.

Among the qualified bidders are Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA Inc. and a number of rural telephone companies.

The AWS auction already has been postponed once. The largest-ever sale of wireless licenses, which is expected to generate between $8 billion and $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury.

Source: RCR News