Sprint Urges Single-Block Bidding in Incentive Auction
Sprint officials asked FCC staff to change the proposed competitive bidding rules in the TV incentive auction to provide single-block bidding, rather than a common ascending clock for what are highly heterogeneous spectrum blocks. “Overwhelmingly,” commenters on the auction rules…
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agree that the FCC’s proposal to resolve such heterogeneity, a post-clock discount, “is at best ineffectual (as bidders merely respond by increasing the relative values during the clock phase),” Sprint said. “At worst (and more likely), the discount is liable to distort license values due to the inability of any discount metric to capture the myriad ways in which different impairments can diminish spectrum utility and value.” Sprint also urged the FCC to beef up the amount of “reserve” spectrum available to competitors to Verizon and AT&T to 40 MHz, “or at least half of the available spectrum at any given clearing target.” Sprint reported on the meetings in an ex parte filing posted by the FCC Friday in docket 14-252.