The AWS spectrum auction really heated up in the ninth round of bidding, bringing the total amount of bids to $3.58 billion and net bids at $3.49 billion. That’s a jump of over a billion dollars from the eighth round, which brought in a total $2.43 billion and a net of $2.40 billion. As the auction moves along, expect the bids to move even higher and higher as the bidding frenzy could bring in a total estimated between $7 billion and $15 billion.
While we’re waiting for the FCC to help us parse out the individual top bidders of the 9th round, the 8th round was dominated by T-Mobile, which bid $1.11 billion in an attempt to boost its lack of spectrum. The Dolan Family, backed by Charles Dolan, Cablevision’s Chairman, followed T-Mobile with $227 million, the cable group SpectrumCo bid $212 million, and Echostar/DirecTV consortium called Wireless DBS bid $141 million.
A quick look at some of the 9th round data suggests SpectrumCo is playing big this round, but we’ll update those findings in a bit.
Update: Also the 10th round just finished and RCR Wireless posts the details, bringing the bidding to $4.14 billion in total bids.
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