FCC Puts 4.6 Billion Minimum Bid on Spectrum Auction

ChainedFei writes "Wired News notes that the Spectrum auction is moving forward, with the FCC placing a minimum bid for the C-block spectrum being offered at $4.6 billion. That, coincidentally, was the amount that Google fronted as a minimum bid to endorse certain open standards for the spectrum being sold. This is essentially a move to shut out smaller possible competitors while also maximizing the money the auction will generate for the grade-A areas of the spectrum. In addition, any single bidder wishing to purchase the entirety of the spectrum must front a minimum of $10 billion. 'According to the FCC, nearly all of that C block aggregate reserve price will go toward a package of U.S. national licenses. This portion of the spectrum also happens to be the one with two open access conditions attached to its sale mandating that all devices be allowed to access the band and that all applications can be able to run across the network. If the reserve price isn't met, the auction will be rerun without these two conditions in place, according to the FCC.'"

Comments

n00bs

[Experiment 626]

Why are they setting a minimum bid? They should just start it at $0.01 and keep saying "reserve not met" until it passes the $4,600,000,000.00 point.

Bad Move

[JaredOfEuropa]

This reminds me of the auction for UMTS licenses that were held in the Netherlands a few years ago. This was back in the mad days when investors and corporations paid silly prices for cable and telco companies. UMTS was the next big thing, and companies were eager to bid for the licenses. So, politicians ended up congratulating each other on how much money they raked in for the public coffers... and companies suddenly found themselves so strapped for cash that they no longer had the money to invest in the expensive rollout of UMTS itself, or even for interim technologies such as EDGE. We were stuck in the stone age with GPRS, and when UMTS finally appeared on the market, it was years late, with lousy coverage, and the plans were horribly expensive (at first it wasn't even available to consumers; only to corporate subscribers). The auctions set back the development of our telco infrastructure by years.

People in favour of these auctions seem to forget that companies are not in it for charity, and investors like to see a reasonable return on the money they put in. The cash for these licenses have to come from someone, and that someone is you, the dumbass consumer.

Re:Bad Move

[Yer Mum]

The same also happened in the UK.

In European countries where they held a 'beauty contest' (operators bid less money but also had to promise to roll out services and coverage) the result was decent services from the start at cheap price for the end consumer. E.g. Norway.

Re:Listing Fees

[LunaticTippy]

eBay isn't going to make jack.

Purchase price: $0.01
Shipping: $4,899,999,999.99

Re:What they are selling

[fyngyrz]

Quit regurgitating what you read on Slashdot all the time and say something insightful.

Regurgitating, eh? I'm an extra class amateur radio operator and I hold an FCC commercial radio operator's license (used to be a first class license, guess it still is, sort of, though they don't give them out any longer.) My name is found in more than one edition of the radio amateur's handbook as an innovator, I received technical achievement of the year from a television group at the Dayton hamvention, and some of well known ham radio manufacturer AEA's commercial products were of my design, as well as my responsibility to get tested for FCC approval. My designs have been on the front cover of 73 and reviewed extensively in 73, CQ, and QST magazines - and elsewhere. I've been the engineer at several 10kw through 100kw radio stations, I've been a DJ (progressive rock), and I've even had my fingers in pirate radio a couple of times. Also related to all this, I'm a musician and a recording engineer.

So it could just possibly be that I might have my own informed opinion on these matters, rather than just parroting what you appear to think is mindless slashdot groupthink. Now, for your edification, Here's a short (and woefully incomplete) list of things I can't do for the "common good" by specific FCC edict:

• Set up a commercial radio station without paying six to seven figures, plus lawyer fees
• Transmit music. Even my own original works.
• Broadcast a book to entertain. Even those I own all the rights to (over two hundred, my father was a popular SF author.)
• Transmit encrypted content
• Broadcast rather than transmit to specific licensed individuals
• Transmit what is loosely called "offensive content" which is anti-liberty and offensive to any true patriot in and of itself - you don't like a broadcast, tune the heck away, don't silence it like a pitiful, cowardly third world dictator.)
• Innovate with wireless data transfer (no encryption and no freedom of content, so...)
• Create a clocked device for sale without paying a lab ten grand (or more) for testing, plus more in fees to the FCC itself
• Transmit an FM broadcast band/mode signal more than 3 meters (outright useless.)
• Compete with any commercial radio entity

And of course, the amateur radio bands that I am allowed to transmit upon are only available to me because I have passed several technical tests according to the requirements of the FCC; your average citizen has no access to the amateur bands as you should know, and so you cannot hold up the amateur bands as a resource for Joe or Jane blow to do anything in particular with. Not that they are very useful what with all the restrictions on what we can do with them, anyway.

I think that you and I fundamentally disagree on what the phrase "common good" actually means.