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

Re:Not sure if it adds up

[vivian]

Either way you cut it, it's just another tax that gets paid by the end consumer, a big fat windfall for consolidated revenue.

I think a much better way would be for companies to bid based on the value they bring to the end consumer public, with the company that promises the best value winning.
If that company fails to deliver within some reasonable time frame, the spectrum should be passed on to the next best offer.
Value wound be measured based on dollars per GBit that they agree to offer the end service for. (voice calls really should be priced this way too, these days - now everything is digital)

if it really isn't practicable to implement something like the above, lt'd be nice to at least see the money spent on a fibre roll-out or other physical media based infrastructure.

Re:what about air?

[Muad'Dave]

I suggest we regulate it like most power/water/sewage companies are regulated - there's a single (very profit- and performance-regulated) company that is responsible for the infrastructure - towers, transceivers, and backhaul in this case. Carriers would then be able to lease access to spectrum from that company with little/no barrier to entry.

Just because you can't see most of the infrastructure it doesn't mean that you shouldn't manage it wisely like any other infrastructure, be it water/sewer pipes or power distribution lines.

I'd love to see this model applied to telephone/fiber/CATV and cellular towers - imagine being able to actually select an internet provider from a wide array of competing companies instead of being locked in to the one that your municipality made the best $$$ deal with.