Revved-Up FCC 3.45-GHz Spectrum Auction Gets In Gear

With little movement in the top markets and increases of only tens of millions of dollars per round in the rest of the country, the Federal Communications Commission is looking to get bidders in the 3.45-GHz midband spectrum auction off the sidelines and move toward the finish line. By round 85, the auction had raised $21,426,504,290 in gross bids. That is about 50 percent higher than the reserve price the FCC set of $14.775 billion to make sure the auction covers the price of relocating federal users of the 100 MHz of the band the Department of Defense agreed to share. The auction began Oct. 5 with 33 bidders, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Cable broadband operators had argued that the way the auction was structured — specifically the license sizes — would discourage them from bidding. But the auction has still become the FCC’s third-highest-grossing sale in history, behind the C-band and AWS-3 auctions.