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."

Comments

Another consumer rip off

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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.