With 36 rounds of bidding concluded Wednesday morning, the Federal Communications Commission auction of the highly coveted 700-megahertz band of the wireless spectrum has shifted to a faster-paced stage 2. Under rules designed to promote more competition, the number of new bids rose from 87 in Round 35 to 203 in Round 36.
The auction is scheduled to remain active until no more bids are made. So far, a total of $18.94 billion has been bid for slices of the spectrum, including $4.8 billion for licenses (the C Block) that cover all 50 states.
More than 200 companies were preapproved by the FCC to participate in the auction, including high-profile names Verizon Wireless, Google, AT&T, and Qualcomm. The companies are bidding on a total of 1,099 licenses for various portions of the country: A Block (176 economic areas); B Block (734 cellular-market areas); C Block (a national bundle of 12 regional economic-area groupings); and D Block (a single nationwide license for the creation of a combined commercial/emergency communications network). An additional 176 licenses are being offered in a fifth slice of spectrum (E Block) for certain types of one-way communications.
Under the rules for stage 2, companies are required to more actively participate in order to continue bidding. The FCC has made it a little easier for companies to do so by lowering the minimum raise on a previous bid from five percent to just two percent.
For some licenses, that’s not much. The current bid for the cellular license of American Samoa, for instance, is just $6,400. But in more urban areas, like Chicago, even a two percent raise on the current high bid — $892 million — represents a serious commitment.
When the bid for the C Block exceeded $4.7 billion, it triggered an FCC-imposed requirement that the winner…