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« Municipal Round-Up: Salem (Ore.), Seattle (Wash.), Ontario (Calif.) | Main | NuTel To Turn ISPs into WISPs »
Today’s bidding up to round 68 produced no final winner: The FCC’s auction of four precious megahertz (MHz) of 800 MHz band spectrum for air-to-ground data services for commercial aviation slogs on. Today, we saw 10 rounds of bidding that resulted in no clear winner. AirCell has technically won their license for 3 MHz of broadband (see yesterday’s report). LiveTV (JetBlue subsidiary) and Space Data (stratospheric balloon-based wireless transceivers) are fighting it out increment by increment for the remaining 1 MHz license. The provisional winning bidder is LiveTV at $2.6m right now.
In the final round today, round 68, LiveTV’s bid didn’t budge, which I found odd. Only LiveTV and Space Data are bidding, and Space Data has run out of waivers that allow them to sit out a round of bidding while they contemplate their navel, their finances, or the tedium of this end game.
What they did as an interesting strategy was put in a higher bid for a different 1 MHz license. Due to the auction rules, that bid counted as a valid one and was considered, because there are three putative pairs of licenses on the block, but only one pair wins—the pair with the highest gross dollar value for both licenses in the set. By bidding on license E in the E/F pair, they retained their eligibility for another round.
Space Data is a small firm that qualifies for 25 percent bidding credits—they pay just 75 percent of their gross bid if they win. LiveTV may have bid the odd increment to $2.6m because the next higher bid—a minimum of $2.75 gross, is over $2m net for Space Data. I can only speculate on the cause, because firms aren’t allowed to comment on the bidding during the auction. Space Data may be looking into whether they can stretch beyond $2m.
Bidding continues tomorrow with round 69, and we’ll get the answer then.
Posted by Glennf at May 24, 2006 1:58 PM
Categories: Air Travel, Spectrum
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