I've purposely avoided writing too much about the auction of a hunk of premium space in the 700 MHz band that's been under discussion for months: It's a bit arcane, but once Google enters the fray, it's mainstream. The FCC has freed up what's considered the last good stretch of bandwidth that might come available in the next decade or more. The propagation of radio waves in 700 MHz is rather superb; that's why it was chosen for television once (UHF), and why 850 MHz is one of two bands used for voice cellular calls.
The auction has been beset by comments from interested public policy groups and parties that plan to bid on the spectrum. There's a whole set of issues about the top part of the band, where some organizations want to move frequencies currently pledged to public safety into an auction pool or another allotment, but build a network that would give priority in emergencies to public safety above commercial uses.
In the rest of the band, the fight has been over "openness." Several groups want the auction rules to require that a winning bidder cannot offer retail sales of services. Rather, the winner would have to build a wholesale network and sell on a non-discriminatory basis. Other forms of openness include allowing any legal device to connect and allowing any legal use. These are pillars in the network neutrality platform, of course. (The four pillars are often cited as any resale user, any use, any device, and no tiered service.)
The FCC chair Kevin Martin first seem to signal he would support a requirement for wholesale-only bidders, but now has backed away from that, making that optional.
Google has expressed strong interest in the band, and has piles of money to spend on it. They favor as much openness as possible in the auction rules. Today, they committed to bidding a minimum of $4.6b if the auction proceeds with as much openness as they want. Carriers opposing this kind of openness said that Google could simply win the auction and impose the terms on itself, rather than narrowing the focus of the auction.