The FCC's broadcast incentive auction is the gift that keeps on giving.
While the auction was over in April of last year (it raised $19,318,157,706, with 50 bidders winning a total of 2776 licenses), and all the wireless winners' applications for spectrum have been filed, the FCC is still working through the grants of those applications.
This week it granted spectrum licenses of five more auction winners given that they were complete and nobody had petitioned the FCC to deny the licenses. That was spectrum once in the hands of TV stations, now being converted to the "other" wireless service--mobile voice and broadband.
The FCC has already granted the licenses of the major players, and is down to the last few smaller licenses, though it just granted the applications for licenses on the bidders on ch. 51 Jan. 11.
Related: FCC Grants T-Mobile Spectrum Licenses
Bidders getting the OK Tuesday (Jan. 30) were Iowa RSA 2 Limited Partnership (two licenses), Pioneer Telephone Cooperative (five licenses), SAL Spectrum LLC (14), and Smith Bagley, Inc. (12).
Wireless bidders' access to spectrum depends on the FCC's schedule for repacking stations into smaller spectrum quarters, though some major players have made moves to speed that process through private agreements.
