NextWave announced today that they are considering a plan to auction off their spectrum holdings. NextWave has hired Deutsche Bank and UBS to investigate the possibility of auctioning it’s spectrum off. NextWave has spectrum holdings covering more than 251 million people, which means they have a significant amount to offer. The 700MHz auction was considered to be a last chance for spectrum in the near future, so this comes as good news. Especially to carriers using the 1700MHz frequency.

NextWave holds significant amounts of spectrum in three frequencies. They include licenses in the 2500Mhz, 2300MHz, and 1700MHz bands. 1700MHz is currently used by several carriers, who won their licenses in the 2005 AWS auction. 1700MHz has been used by Cricket and MetroPCS, and in some markets, there are all AWS deployments. 1700MHz is also going to be used by T-Mobile, for their upcoming UMTS service.

As for the 2300MHz and 2500MHz holdings, the most obvious beneficiaries are Sprint Nextel, and Clearwire. They are deploying WiMAX in the 2500MHz bands. While they are not using 2300MHz for their WiMAX, 2300MHz has been noted as a viable frequency for WiMAX.

It has also been suggested that a single entity could buy NextWave’s spectrum and use it to deploy a whole new network. Voice and data traffic is of course viable on those bands, and it is a possibility. NextWave’s strong spectrum position would make any new carrier considered a national level carrier.

[Via MocoNews]