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back to article US spectrum auction falls short by, oh, you know, $66bn thanks to tightwad mobile giants

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will have to change its plans for the 600MHz radio spectrum auction for mobile broadband – after the latest stage of bidding raised just $22.4bn of an $88bn goal. "Bidding in the forward auction has concluded for Stage 1 without meeting the final stage rule and without meeting the …

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  1. Tom Samplonius

    The economy...

    The US economy is still pretty soft. Dumping billions into an abstract asset like spectrum isn't that appealing. Plus, why bid the spectrum up against each other? There are only a few players with that many billions available to begin with. They probably set a ceiling on their bidding. I don't know if the FCC carved out smaller regional licenses that companies without billions could bid on. That typically generates interesting competition in smaller areas. Almost anyone can setup an LTE site these days.

    These same operators are hoping that 60Ghz and 70/80Ghz, which are coming with 5G, will solve all their problems and be a lot cheaper. It is all near line of sight though, so the operators are going to need a shed load more sites. FCC has recently expanded the 60Ghz allocation for free use.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Nuno trancoso
      Reply Icon

      Re: The economy...

      LOS might not be a issue once Google has 99999999999999999999999999999 baloons roaming the skyes.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The economy...

        do you mean...

        99 million baloons slurping your wifi data 24/7/52 and feeing it back to the AAI System (Alphabet Artificial Intelligence) just so that they can send you more targetted adverts injected into your WiFi stream without your permission?

        come on suckers, you know you really want it don't you!

        1 4 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The economy...

        ninety-nine Google Balloons gone by?

        1 0 Reply
        1. earl grey
          Reply Icon
          Pint

          Re: The economy...

          Here's a beer for your effort Nena.

          0 0 Reply
  2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Let's party auction like it's 1999... looks like the telcos are not really that much into retro after all.

    1 0 Reply
  3. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    OTA

    I just replaced the rooftop TV antenna and amplifier to fix signal overload from reallocated channels 52-83. It would be nice if I don't have to immediately do it again. What's on broadcast TV isn't worth a whole lot of effort.

    1 0 Reply
  4. Ru'
    Facepalm

    What is not mentioned here is the extreme costs the government and tv companies had to bear to produce the aether in the first place, not to mention all the modifications to keep pace with the advances in radio transmissions (tv, colour tv, stereo sound, surround sound, HD, 4k etc.).

    It's not money for nothing they are asking for!

    1 0 Reply
  5. Tromos

    "...a way to gain valuable new spectrum..."

    And for their next trick, they'll be adjusting the gravitational constant.

    3 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    The billions extracted by the FCC via their auction have to come from somewhere and it ain't going to be the corporate coffers. Eventually they have to incorporate it somehow into the customers bill (NPV accounting?) which implies that bills will have to be higher at some point in the near future and continuing forward from there. Consumers are already in a bit of revolt (eek, the peasants are revolting!) as it is which is why the companies seem to be rejigging the plans.

    Phone companies to FCC: FO!

    1 0 Reply
    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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      "which implies that bills will have to be higher at some point in the near future "

      Why of course not. More spectrum means more customers and that profit will no doubt pay for the spectrum. At least that's what da gov thinks will happen.

      0 0 Reply
  7. Mage Silver badge

    Cellular.

    This is a stupid waste of TV spectrum that cripples future developments of Broadcast. Broadcast is complementary to Internet, the Internet can't replace it.

    Really there should be no mobile / Internet etc below about 800 MHz as the cell size is too large and undefined.

    The whole point of Mobile is NOT more range (hugely wasteful of spectrum and poor speed and capacity) but to add more masts. The most masts the lower the power and better the capacity.

    The existing Mobile / Cell spectrum above 800MHz is poorly utilised.

    This was regulator greed, as is Ofcom's and Comreg's proposals to sell off TV spectrum.

    Poor TV content is no reason to penalise Broadcast forever.

    8 0 Reply
  8. Al Jabber

    You have to be slightly cautious with the conclusions here, as the auction structure is not a regular one and the process is actually designed to throw up these price differences.

    Spectrum auctions are usually the government just looking to maximise revenue for a public asset. A fairly traditional auction of the highest bidder gets the licence works well.

    This is different because it is trying to transfer an asset owned by a corporation (a lease to TV spectrum) to another corporation, without having the taxpayer buy it back in the middle and being on the hook for any losses caused when it's re-sold subsequently.

    The auction process is two stage; the TV guys say "we'd like this much", and the cell firms say "we'll pay this much". It is expected, and designed, that there will be a gap between those numbers. The process then repeats until the prices come together. That's probably going to take a while.

    3 0 Reply

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