Don’t worry, we won’t be bringing you every bid update from the 700MHz spectrum auction, but news is just in from the first round and something tells me the FCC bean-counters will be rubbing their hands in glee. So far more than $2.4bn has been bid for the five frequency blocks – you can see the latest figures on this page and by clicking “View Auction Results” – not enough to breach the reserve prices, but a healthy start certainly.
Currently the coveted block C has a bid of $1.04bn while block D has made $472m. According to FCC rules the identity of the bidders will not be revealed until the auction ends.
We’ll be sure to bring you any more interesting details as they happen – round two closes in an hours, and there’s one further round scheduled for today.
[via Reuters]
Quick update:
The 700 MHz auction paused Friday with $3.7 billion in bids on 921 licenses at the end of four rounds. Some 178 licenses have yet to receive a qualified bid. The C-block package of licenses covering 50 states attracted the highest bidding with one new bid reaching nearly $1.8 billion at the end of the fourth round. A minimum bid of $4.6 billion in needed to enact the open-access provision for the C-block. The D-block license, reserved for an operator willing to serve public safety, hasn’t been bid on since the first round, when it received a bid of $472 million. The FCC has a $1.3-billion reserve bid requirement on the license.