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May 16, 2006

Air-to-Ground Auction Continues: $11.5m and Counting

By Glenn Fleishman

The FCC’s Auction 65 for air-to-ground (in-flight) spectrum continued today: Bidding today reached $11.274m for the sweet exclusive 3 MHz chunk (license F) and just $282K for the 1 MHz complement (license E). This has blown through my guess of $8m because of the small increments through which bidding proceeded. I still think Verizon will pay whatever is necessary to get license F. The dollar amount started moving up rather rapidly today from under $5m total on the previous day of bidding to $11.5m today.

An announcement from the FCC on Monday may explain the delay of a few days in resuming bidding. While it’s dense to read, the FCC clarified that any organizations involved in the bidding that share controlling interest might see a bid from a previous round of bidding trump a bid in the current round if there’s a conflict between controlling interests otherwise being the prospective winner. At least two companies have common controlling interests. No companies with common controlling interests may win both licenses, and so bidding technology must restrict that from happening.

Bidding was only in six rounds today, and will go into eight rounds starting at 10 am Eastern tomorrow, May 17. Unless we hear otherwise. Which we might.

Posted by Glennf at May 16, 2006 2:28 PM

Categories: Air Travel, Spectrum

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