January’s US news won’t only be interesting for the Barack vs Hillary battles in Iowa and New Hampshire, but also for the results of the US auction of 700MHz wireless spectrum.
Expected to raise $15 billion, the auction starts on January 24th, and could take several weeks. The FCC says there are 266 applications and has accepted 96.
Among those applicants seeing their applications rejected for being ‘incomplete’ are AT&T, Verizon and Qualcomm. But they get another chance to get it right.
Google’s application was not subjected to this indignity, and has been accepted.
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Google is the most interesting of all the applicants because the company may intend to build a pan-US wireless access telecommunications network, and buying 700MHz spectrum may be the last chance anyone will ever get to build one.
Google certainly has the money, and may have enough dark fibre in place, to do it.
The most intriguing dark horse is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bidding via a company called Vulcan Spectrum. Besides investing in very large yachts, Allen has put money into many high-tech ventures, one being the x86 clone processor company Transmeta.
The next hurdle for all accepted applicants is to put down a deposit before January 4th
About a third of the spectrum which is to be auctioned will be sold on condition that the purchasers do not restrict the access devices which can be used on it.
Unlike in the UK, where the terms of the original spectrum auction said that phones should work with interchangeable SIM cards from any network operator, the Americans have, up to now, allowed operators to restrict devices to work on only one network.
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