Slashdot Mirror
Bidding In Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion
An anonymous reader sends word that the 2014 wireless spectrum license auction has surpassed $34 billion. "A government auction of airwaves for use in mobile broadband has blown through presale estimates, becoming the biggest auction in the Federal Communications Commission's history and signaling that wireless companies expect demand for Internet access by smartphones to continue to soar. And it's not over yet. Companies bid more than $34 billion as of Friday afternoon for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum, being sold by the F.C.C. That total is more than three times the $10.5 billion reserve price that the commission put on the sale, the first offering of previously unavailable airwaves in six years."
If company A bids 15 million, and company B bids 14.5 billion and company C bids 6 billion, then all the Govt gets is the 15 billion from the top bidder, not the sum total of the bids
So... What does the American public get out of this deal?
Seems like a much cheaper idea for the corporations. Why are we selling them?
a company owning swaths of spectrum just seems like a bad idea from a technological progress standpoint.
When is the government going to auction off the fucking air we breath to the highest bidder?
1st Pooop!!! bravo! once again.
I understand the whole tragedy of the commons thing, but isnt' there a more equitable way to do the whole airwaves thing?
I have a feeling this is only to fill government coffers a bit, but it screws out poor people. The service and competition in American wireless is really atrocious and it's reflected in the high and stagnant prices.
Scarce limited resource being sold off to the highest bidder and all that money will be spent in 3-4 days.
Perhaps mention *USA* in the title or excerpt? Surprisingly enough, not all of us live there.
Because they invest a lot of money to use the spectrum. They want guarantees that they will be able to keep it.
Some parts of the spectrum are leased, which is significantly cheaper. Some VHF frequencies can be had for less than 200$ per year. If your infrastructure is cheap, by all means you just license it.
Yet again the government is selling off stuff which is a "common asset" to the highest bidder and totally undervalued the resource in its original estimates.
Who ends up paying for this in the end? You do! $100 a month for 1GB of data and you still pay to receive text messages! Ha-ha! Dumbasses.
I wonder what provisions the government put on the license. Perhaps something about infrastructure to aid in surveillance?
/Tinfoil?
I, for one, welcome our new E-Mag spectrum overlords.
Would it have hurt to mention which government ?
I don't believe for a moment that $34 Billion is being bid for 65 megahertz of spectrum; I suspect there is an error somewhere here. Could it be somewhere closer to 65 Gigahertz?
If these companies are willing to spend soooo much on this spectrum, that means they are going to fight tooth and nail against any sort of free public wifi. The laws they bought to kill municipal broadband are going to be chicken-shit compared to the laws they will pay to kill municipal wifi.
Reading the article you can quickly find your answer.
Thanks Government!
Part of the problem with the FCC is that they are not following their guideline to promote competition. If you sell a small amount of bandwidth at auction and Verizon and AT&T buy it all up for a crazy amount of money then all the FCC has done is allowed the duopoly to limit competition.
They should put a price tag on the spectrum, provision it out and offer it in turn like a draft. Then the companies can buy positions from one another for other terms that are agreed upon before the draft begins. Much better for competition.
Was a good approach when the time technology was limited. Now a days the cost of adding an embedded device to allow the spectrum to be multiplexed is very low. There is no reason (aside from spectrum for scientific and military application) that in general there should be a policy that encourages common communication standards for devices. We are letting old technology dominate what could be a boon in communications capabilities for all of us.
This is a free zero cost medium. The spectrum should be opnened up to everyone with power being the only limitation. We are told over and over the spectrum needs to be regulated because of interference yet for all intents and purposes there is nothing in physics that limits information density until you get to the quantum level. Wireless carriers have zero incentive to combat interference when they have a monopoly on the spectrum. They just charge more. It's also obvious to many engineers that mesh networks are more efficient. But mesh networks decentralize authority and therefore affect revenue so meshing is not likely to be popular with incumbent carriers. All those billions will ultimately be paid for be the consumer while the incumbents have zero incentive to innovate. We should take the spectrum away from business people and give it to engineers who can actually do something with it.
Many Internet users have already started to seize control of these bands. Since Obama and the FCC are attempting to seize control over the Internet, Mesh networks are in development, and those frequencies will be utilized weather the FCC wants them used or not. Courts and laws not withstanding.
The fact that it's openly talked about by many people, indicates that those that are biding on them, will have no excuses, and no crying when other people bleed over "their" frequency. The bidders know about it or at least should have known about it and they should stay clear of it. They are accepting the results.
These frequencies were taken from the military by threat of a financial gun. The bands are important for national defense, which to me is more important than allowing teenagers to text each other.
think your math issue stems from fact they auctioned 6 BLOCKS of spectrum not 1 unit