Tom Altman’s Wedia Conversation

 It seems everyone has to go the auction except our friends over at AT&T:

AT&T bought the spectrum from Aloha Spectrum Holdings. The spectrum, in the highly coveted 700MHz band, covers 196 million of the 303 million U.S. residents and includes 72 of the top 100 media markets in the country. Aloha acquired the spectrum in earlier FCC auctions and from other auction winners. This portion of the 700MHz spectrum is not part of the FCC auction now in progress.

I’m just not sure it seems “fair” to allow this to happen.  Why not include this in the auction.  AT&T is getting away with highway robbery @ 2.5 Billion!  (I cannot believe I just typed that!)

Gizmodo has a good post called “The Ultimate 700MHz Auction Guide: What It Is, Who’ll Win and Why You Should Care” - I’ve been keeping an eye on this auction, because it really seems to have a big impact on the internet and the future of all electronics for the next few years.

Interesting Gizmodo comments:

Why Would Someone Pay BILLIONS for It?
Every frequency band has slightly different physical attributes. The 700MHz band penetrates walls fairly easily and travels well, making it perfect for either cellular or long-range wireless broadband

Google’s statements of late haven’t been very enthusiastic about the prospect of winning; the ol’ college reading between the lines says it’s not planning to. But, it did get the open access provisions it pushed for, so there’s really no need to finance the network on top of it.

Verizon winning the C block pretty much kills previous utopian notions of a mythical third pipe, outside the grasp of the vested telcos, bringing glorious open internets to us all.

Not sure what all this means yet - but it will definetly be interesting to keep an eye on and see what comes of it all.

The auction is heating up for the 700MHz band. This could be the future of wireless internet in the US.

The battle for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum has begun. It is both a business and political battle, while the issues are very technical. The US government is holding an auction in January to sell off the most valuable wireless spectrum ever available, raising as much as $10 Billion dollars.

Here is a post from Don Dodge’s blog talking about it.