The FCC Friday released a list of 168 bidders that have qualified to participate in the auction of advanced wireless services licenses that begins August 9. As expected, T-Mobile is on the list. It is likely to be one of the most aggressive bidders since it needs additional spectrum to roll out W-CDMA services. Cingular and Verizon Wireless are also bidders. The commission also ended its practice of using blind bidding during the auction. Instead, said the FCC, the auction will be conducted using the information-disclosure typically used during past FCC auctions.
"The FCC concluded that if this measure of likely competition, or modified-eligibility ratio, is equal to or greater than three, the likely level of competition should be sufficient to make anti-competitive outcomes difficult to sustain and therefore the benefits of publicly revealing information on bidder interests and bidder identities likely would outweigh the potential harms. Because the modified-eligibility ratio is equal to at least three, this auction will be conducted with the typical disclosure of information from this point forward that is, revealing bidder license selection before the auction, as well as all bids and bidder identities at the end of each round," said the FCC.
For more about the upcoming AWS auction:
- read this article from RCR Wireless News