US Spectrum Auction — Preliminary Results

The preliminary results: T-Mobile was the top bidder, offering almost $4.2 billion for 120 licenses. Verizon Wireless agreed to pay $2.8 billion for 13 licenses, and a consortium that includes cable operators Comcast Corp. and Time Warne, along with cellular-phone carrier Sprint Nextel Corp., agreed to pay almost $2.4 billion for 137 spectrum licenses.
Pali Capital has sent some preliminary analysis of the results of the US spectrum auction (which are available at the FCC page here). The auction ended today after 161 rounds and netting $13,700,267,150. Well, they still have to pay up of course, or lose the spectrum.
“T-Mobile and the Cable Group won licenses that covered most of the United States. The Cable group provided the most surprising results by winning most of the 20 MHz B block licenses for $0.45 per MHz POP. Only Cricket, which spread its bids over multiple bands, had a lower price among the leading bidders.”
–Verizon nabbed 20 MHz on the eastern half of the US
–Cingular won regional licenses in the western half of the US as well as some eastern markets.
–Metro PCS won 100 million POPS by winning the West and Northeast regions and added another 15 million by winning Texas and Detroit. Its wins are probably the most notable news as it will likely inject incremental competition into the market.
I suspect there’ll be some detailed analysis coming out about what the various companies plan to do with the additional spectrum, and how it will affect data services.

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