Whether it is a pre-Thanksgiving lull or just the natural slowing of an auction as the numbers climb, the FCC's AWS-3 auction bids "only" increased by a hair under $600 million on 448 bids Monday (Nov. 24) in round 28 of what has been a heavyweight slugfest for spectrum that wireless companies say they desperately need—round 27 saw more than a billion dollars in new bids.
The latest round pushed the total bids so far to $34,681,769,700 for 1,614 available spectrum licenses comprising 65 MHz of spectrum. The auction launched Nov. 13, and will continue until there are no more bids or waivers exercised in a round.
The majority of that 65 MHz is expected to go to AT&T and Verizon, the largest bidders in the auction. The highest bid so far is $2,012,964,000 for one of five New York City area licenses.
(Photo via Ervins Strauhmanis's Flickr. Image taken on Sept. 19, 2014 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)
