Time for a movie about the FCC 700 mhz auction. The seven nerve wracking weeks had drama to rival the TV Series 24 and the movie Thirteen Days about the Cuban missile crisis.
Scene One shows the FCC Commissioner declaring the auction a major success, and dismissing a Skype petition asking for open access on our cell networks as moot - since the auction rules mandate open access for some of the licenses. A Michael Moore like cynical voice over would announce he conveniently did not mention that the two biggest winners in the auction were actually hostile to open access.
The movie would have suspense. Google bid, then sweated hoping it would not have to spend the $ 4.71 billion. All it wanted was to ensure open access on the C block which had 12 Regional licenses. Can you hear the suspense in the 5.1 surround sound? Can you see the beads of sweat in the Blu-Ray HD display?
The movie would have a murder plot. The D block with 1 nationwide license had its intrigue as a leading candidate to bid shut down just ahead of the auction.
It would have a side plot around iPhone - gotta have that. It would center on AT&T which deliberately did not bid for the C block because of the open access requirements. It chose instead to pay a premium for the B Block - which organized 734 Cellular Market area licenses.
It would have the mandatory bad guy. Verizon Wireless's bids accounted for almost half of the total proceeds - after initially suing the FCC for forcing the open access rules.
It would have plenty of supporting actors like William Macy and Robert Duvall. 101 bidders won the 1090 licenses awarded so far. Two in particular could have meaty roles. Qualcomm, which usually focuses on chips for mobile phones, won bids on both east and west coast in the E block to boost its mobile TV offering. EchoStar, the satellite video provider, won 168 licenses in the E block to establish a near nationwide footprint. The A and E blocks each had 176 Economic Area licenses.
It would have the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene where the guy is all bluster waving his big sword this way and that, and Indy just pulls out his pistol and shoots him. All this excitement and 261 auction rounds (each faithfully documented here) will yield little likely consumer impact for a while. Verizon and AT&T will both use the new spectrum to launch their 4G - LTE networks. But Verizon will not do so till 2010, AT&T till 2012.
In the meantime, Nielsen defines today's “successful (mobile) call” as one established and maintained for at least two minutes. That's right - two minutes. The FCC defines 200 KBPS as its minimum speed to qualify for "broadband". More Michael Moore cynical voice overs.
And - we will definitely be ready for a sequel in 2012. By then Delta Airlines will be out of the flight business as more people move to telepresence, and will have merged with Sprint...and the FAA will be fighting to move into the FCC turf and run Auction 74. I hope I do better in that auction with my unused Delta miles than I can on eBay -)
