FCC accelerates AWS auction

The FCC has added two additional bidding rounds per day to the Advanced Wireless Services auction, an action that is likely to see the total bids escalate beyond the $13.6 billion already raised.

There are now a total of six rounds each day, and each bidding round lasts only 30 minutes, yet rules and minimums for bidding are still in place so totals are likely to increase faster than the sluggish progress of the last few weeks.

T-Mobile is still the leading bidder with the highest provisional bid on 116 licenses for a total of $4.15 billion. It continues to hold the highest bid for regional licenses covering large swaths of the U.S., which it needs to deploy a nationwide 3G footprint.

Verizon Wireless is the second highest bidder with $2.80 billion on the table, but those bids are divided among only four huge regional licenses, including a $1.3 billion bid for a 20 MHz license covering the densely populated Northeast--the highest grossing license in the auction so far.

Sprint and its cable company partners meanwhile have racked up $2.36 billion in bids, but they are taking the opposite approach of Verizon Wireless, bidding only on licenses in specific cities and metropolitan regions, which mainly conform to where the cable companies offer programming and broadband services.

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