Now that FCC rules prohibiting participants in the 700Mhz auction from commenting have expired, everybody involved in the auction is naturally very chatty. The two biggest winners, AT&T and Verizon, confirmed plans to use the newly acquired spectrum to begin building out LTE infrastructure. Prototype LTE test systems using 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas have achieved download speeds faster than 300Mbps, though obviously early telco deployments won't be remotely close to those speeds (probably closer to 10Mbps or so initially).
AT&T is saying that they "only" bid $4.74 billion for a majority of the C block spectrum because of their purchase
last October of spectrum from Aloha partners. AT&T says they now have enough spectrum to reach 87 percent of the total U.S. population, and 100% of the nation’s largest 200 cities. AT&T's LTE-based service using the spectrum will roll out in 2012.
Verizon is saying that the $9.63 billion they spent at auction will also be going toward deployment of LTE connectivity "sometime in the 2010 time frame". The company says the addition will increase the company's average spectrum depth per market to 82 MHz, from 52 MHz today. Verizon also chatted up their plans this morning via webcast.
Google is saying that the search giant did try to nab some licenses, but their primary effort was to ensure the inclusion of "open access" conditions. While the press seems convinced that these FCC-mandated conditions will result in a utopian telecom universe, people familiar with AT&T/Verizon lobbying & legal prowess
know better. Google says one thing they did accomplish was to drive up C-Block bidding:
quote:
Based on the way that the bidding played out, our participation in the auction helped ensure that the C Block met the reserve price. In fact, in ten of the bidding rounds we actually raised our own bid -- even though no one was bidding against us -- to ensure aggressive bidding on the C Block. In turn, that helped increase the revenues raised for the U.S. Treasury, while making sure that the openness conditions would be applied to the ultimate licensee.
But as
noted previously, making a telecom giant pay an extra billion is kind of like forcing an Olympic athlete to run an extra few yards. Decades of charging grandmothers ten bucks for a caller ID service that costs pennies to provide does have its benefits. Ultimately, Google's biggest perk from the auction was a slew of free advertising as a moral crusader of telecom justice -- though these efforts didn't do much of anything to change the status quo.
