The cast for the federal spectrum auction in January has now been assembled. On Tuesday night, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a list of 266 applicants who want to bid. The auction will offer frequencies that had been used for analog transmission by TV stations, which are now moving to digital.
The applicants include Google, Cablevision, Cox, Qualcomm, Alltel, Chevron, US Cellular, as well as Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., regional carriers such as Leap Wireless and MetroPCS, the startup Frontier Wireless, and a Guam-backed phone company headed by Roy Disney, Walt’s brother.
There’s also the tiny, Middletown, Rhode Island-based fixed-wireless Internet provider, Towerstream, which reported a $1.75 million loss in its third-quarter, on revenues of $1.76 million.
AT&T and Verizon Communications have applied, but the FCC marked their applications as “incomplete” for unspecified reasons. In all, about 170 of the 266 applicants had incomplete applications, including MetroPCS and Alltel.
‘Chance of a Lifetime’
The auction will cover five blocks of 700-MHz spectrum. Many observers are describing it as “the chance of a lifetime,” and it certainly has the makings of an epic event.
For one thing, the lead-up to this auction has included lobbying by an alliance of organizations and companies, spearheaded by Google, to require open access for at least some of the spectrum to be auctioned.
This openness would include the ability for any outside, compatible device and nonmalicious software to be used on those frequencies, a requirement that the FCC eventually adopted.
Although other open-access requests were not adopted, including a requirement that the winner make the bandwidth available on a wholesale basis to third-party resellers, the initially reluctant AT&T and Verizon Wireless now have declared their support for open networks.
‘No Real Surprises’
Godfrey Chua, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, said that the list of applicants has “no real surprises.” But…