700 MHz Auction Expected to End This Week, as Bidding Slows
The 700 MHz auction likely will close within days. The end was expected as early as Wednesday by Wireless Strategy, which has provided a daily, detailed update, but the auction continued at our deadline. At 214 rounds and counting, the 700 MHz auction outlasted the 2006 advanced wireless services auction, which closed after 161 rounds. Bids in the 700 MHz auction total nearly $20 billion.
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Bidding could run several more days, Tom Peters of Wireless Strategy told us Wednesday. “There are still several hundred licenses that could be in play,” he said. “There are several hundred licenses that are well below average in terms of their cost per MHz/POP, have a value in bidding units that is in the range of the licenses that are being bid on now, and are not prohibitively expensive,” he said. Given so many very small and potentially undervalued licenses, the auction could last several more days, he said.
Most latter bids have been for B-block licenses, but the auction’s character shifted Wednesday, Peters said. Bidding Tuesday was on five licenses - covering Yuba City, Calif., Albany, Ga., Hunterdon, N.J., Imperial, Calif., and Ashtabula, Ohio, he said. On Wednesday, others came into play.
“I had predicted that the auction would end today, but given the current bidding activity, I am revising that estimate to Friday or Monday,” Peters said. He hopes the agency will help things along by holding more rounds per day, he said. “If they increase from the current 10 rounds per day to 14 starting tomorrow, it will help us realize an ending this week.”
The auction could end any time, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. Most bidding has been on the same few licenses, she said. “Sort of like the groove in a broken record, we've been stuck at 5 bids for nearly 20 rounds now,” Arbogast said “The bid increments are sufficiently small now that it doesn’t cost that much to keep on fighting for the remaining small licenses. But at some point, one of the warring parties will decide to let Ashtabula, Ohio, go.”