Google's been making all kinds of a fuss lately over what it claims are Verizon's plans to subvert the intent of the 700MHz open-access rules, but it looks like the carrier isn't interested in fighting it out (for once). Verizon issued a statement today saying that it "understood the FCC's rules," and that "of course we'll abide by those rules." Of course, that doesn't really mean anything until they build out the network and we see how they actually implement open-access -- which will take years -- but once again, it seems like Google is really the one in control of the 700MHz spectrum, even though it didn't win. Crafty!

It's been known for years that some of Sprint Nextel's Direct Connect spectrum causes bouts of interference with public safety equipment, and the FCC got the ball rolling on a plan several years ago for the carrier to swap some airwaves with agencies around the country by June of this year to keep everyone happy. Problem is, some 500 of those agencies still aren't ready to trade, and Sprint has taken issue with the fact that the FCC wants it to meet its end of the bargain by next month anyhow. Nevertheless, a federal appeals court has ruled in the FCC's favor, setting the wheels in motion for a possible massive loss of Nextel coverage on the drop-dead date of June 26 -- but industry analysts aren't too worried. Most seem to be predicting that the FCC will end up extending the deadline by six months or so anyway, so Kevin Martin and his ragtag gang must just love watching carriers sweat. Oh, not to mention a few million Direct Connect customers.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Thought that the 700MHz auction was the last chance for an all-new US carrier to emerge? Think again. Turns out that NextWave, the company behind the TDtv mobile television standard among other things, has itself a nice little collection of US spectrum that it claims covers something on the order of 251 million Americans -- and it's retaining professional help to shop the package around. These airwaves are split across the 1.7 / 2.1GHz (AWS), 2.3GHz, and 2.5GHz bandwidths, leaving with the potential buyer with a fragmented, albeit wide-reaching swath of EF that could theoretically see another player hop in the ring to offer voice, data, or both -- subject to the FCC's approval of any sale, of course.

[Via mocoNews]

Although AT&T, Verizon and the rest of the telco gang stole the limelight (and threw down some serious coinage) at the conclusion of the recent spectrum auction, little ole DISH Network managed to get in on the action, too. Apparently the satellite provider scooped up 6MHz of bandwidth that would cover around 75-percent of the US, but analysts are still scratching their heads trying to figure out why. Its sliver would reportedly enable it to launch a mobile TV service, though most assume it wouldn't jump in with a number of providers already out there trying to stay afloat. It could also use its winnings to enable STBs to report viewing habits and utilize two-way services without being hooked up to a phone line. Nevertheless, Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, asserts that there are simply "more questions than answers at this point," so we reckon we'll just keep on testing our patience for now.

We're going to resist digging deep into our secret stash of yak jokes here and just concentrate on the facts: Canada's Yak Communications, a division of a larger telecom outfit Globalive, has formally submitted paperwork to get in on Canada's upcoming spectrum auction. The auction's a pretty big deal -- T-Mobile's name has been thrown around as a possible entrant -- because as Yak points out, only three companies currently own the entirety of Canada's national cellular airwaves, leaving plenty of room for improvement in the competition department. Yak's whole deal appears to be centered around a contract-free approach, something that could come as a refreshing change of pace in a country where three-year contracts are more the rule than the exception. The auction kicks off toward the end of May, and in the meantime, feel free to post yak humor of your very own (of the clean sort, of course) in comments.

[Via Mobile In Canada]

So Canada's about to swing open the doors to a new wireless competitor thanks to a massive spectrum auction being held this spring, and at least one analyst type of character -- this one with Canada's CIBC -- thinks T-Mobile might be game. Having just spread into North America relatively recently on thing wings of its Voicestream and Powertel purchases in 2001, it would be a considerably easier hop to spread north into Canada, and the analyst speculates that Deutsche Telekom could get around the country's pesky domestic ownership rules by partnering (at least initially, anyway) with a homegrown carrier. Canadians, we turn the question over to you: how would you feel about T-Mobile heading up your way?

[Via Mobile In Canada]

No, it's not that 700MHz spectrum, but the $2.5 billion sale of the airwaves to AT&T from private firm Aloha Partners could have implications as large as Auction 73's massive, open-access Block C itself. Given that Aloha's Hiwire trials for DVB-H-based mobile TV have been playing in the 700MHz arena, we suspect this could spell doom for the whole project -- and on the heels of Modeo's collapse, very likely spells doom for DVB-H on the whole in the US. Though that's great news for Qualcomm and DVB-H competitor MediaFLO, it's awful news for the prospect of a global mobile TV standard, closely (if not eerily) following what happened years back with the European Union's selection of GSM and the rise of CDMA in North America. For its part, AT&T says it's going to use its newfound airwaves -- which cover 72 of the top 100 US markets -- for "broadcast video or for two-way communications such as voice, data or multicast content." Admittedly, the "broadcast video" part of that leads us to believe that Hiwire could somehow survive the change in ownership, but with AT&T's selection of MediaFLO last year as its standard of choice, it sure ain't likely.

Feeling frightened, confused, or tingly due to all this 700MHz auction talk and its "open access" rules? Truck on over to Engadget classic and get the full rundown on what you need to know.

There was a brief, tense pause in the bidding this morning, but some anonymous giant telecom company (Google, perhaps?) has just pushed the price of the 700MHz C-block over the FCC's reserve price of $4.6B -- and the rest of us straight into the promised land of open access. Yep, January 31, 2008, Round 17 will be the day to remember -- to think it was all a dream, we used to read Free Spectrum magazine.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Here's some up to date 700MHz bidding news for you. Currently, bids on the hotly contested "C" block have risen to almost $4.3 billion, or just a few dollars away from the FCC's reserve price of $4.6 billion. That number puts us perilously close to triggering the "open-access rule" which pretty much everyone (Google especially) has been clamoring for (or fighting). The total bids on the spectrum are also hovering near the $10 billion mark, which has been the FCC's goal all along, ostensibly demonstrating that everything is going according to plan. There is one small snag, with the "D" block -- the public safety / first responder band -- not seeing the kind of action the agency had hoped for, nabbing only $472 million in bids, a far cry from the minimum requirement of $1.6 billion. Of course, bidding has six weeks to go, so no one seems to be sweating just yet, though "lawmakers" are swearing they'll take "quick action" if the numbers don't rise.

[Thanks, Aaron]

Read -- 700Mhz Auction Approaches $10 Billion
Read -- House Panel Bird-Dogging 700MHz Auction

Alright, alright, everyone calm down -- yes, today marks the beginning of 2008's Super Bowl of wireless spectrum auctions, but unfortunately, there won't be much to see. No 24-hour television coverage of the intense action, no live webcams of the FCC's wacky, wild, no-holds-barred trading floors; heck, not even an official update from the Commish or any of the bidders. Why's that? Glad you asked. Let us quickly break down what the auction's all about and what it means to you:

• The auction, known officially as Auction 73, is made possible by the move from analog to digital television, which frees swaths of bandwidth in the 700MHz range.
• This represents one of the last frontiers of nationwide RF spectrum that is expected to be available and practical for consumer use any time soon, which has generated intense interest and even more intense scrutiny.
• In an effort to stem collusion, the FCC is being extremely secretive about the applicants for bidding, saying only that there is a total of 214 bidders involved. They've also told bidders that they aren't allowed to publicly disclose anything about the auction or their bids before the auction's over, lest they forfeit the whole shebang.
• We do know that AT&T, Verizon, Cox, and most famously, Google are all committed to bidding.
• Auction 73 is broken into a total of five "blocks." Block C is by far the most coveted of the five because it contains the most bandwidth -- 22MHz in total, broken into two 11MHz pairs -- and also because it consists of fewer regions, making it easier to assemble a contiguous, nationwide network. Blocks A, B, and D should see some action, too, while Block E is the redheaded stepchild of the bunch with only one 6MHz piece of spectrum to its name.
• The FCC has ordered that the winner of the Block C auction must commit to creating an open-access network, meaning any device capable of supporting the appropriate protocols must be allowed to connect and enjoy 700MHz bliss.
• Bidding begins today, January 24, in two consecutive rounds. Starting tomorrow and each business day thereafter, there will be a total of three bidding rounds. After each round concludes, the FCC will disclose to bidders the current asking price for each block without revealing anything about the winning bidders. Bidding continues indefinitely until no additional bids are placed.
• The reserve price for Block A is $1.81 billion; Block B, $1.37 billion; Block C, a whopping $4.64 billion; Block D, $1.33 billion, and Block E, $904 million. If at the end of bidding any reserves have not been met, a new auction, Auction 76, will automatically be spawned. The FCC's open-access requirement on Block C would be dropped if it makes it through to Auction 76, fueling rumors that Google intends to bid it up to the reserve price then drop out. The date and new reserve prices for the remaining blocks would be decided when (and if) it's determined that Auction 76 is necessary.
• There is no "Buy it now!" button, we hear, and the FCC has a stellar feedback rating. Don't worry, bidders, the FCC isn't going to screw you on shipping and handling for the wireless spectrum you've already paid top dollar for.

So there you have it. As dry as that summary may be, it pales in comparison to the piles upon piles of literature the FCC has generated (as one might expect from a government bureaucracy of the highest order) and it's really about as boiled down as we can get it for the moment. We won't know who won, where the bidding stands, or what firms plan to do with their blocks until the conclusion of the auction -- a conclusion that could come tomorrow, next week, or next month. Rest assured, though, we'll have plenty more coverage as soon as this all shakes down.

There isn't necessarily any single morsel of news here, but 3G Americas -- the group responsible for keeping GSM on the up and up this side of the pond -- just wants everyone to know that it likes AWS' chances for gaining ground in this part of the world for new HSPA (and eventually, LTE) deployments. Yanks may know AWS better as the weird flavor of bandwidth T-Mobile has gotten stuck with for deploying its desperately overdue 3G services; it utilizes spectrum in both the 1700 and 2100MHz spaces to push bits around, and while it hasn't yet been commercially deployed on a wide scale, the consortium points out that AWS spectrum auctions are in the pipe for Canada, Chile, and Mexico, among others. Naturally, that's very good news for anyone who finds themselves shopping for an AWS handset down the road, seeing how broader support across borders leads to broader manufacturer support -- a fact that 3G Americas is also quick to note. European and Asian buy-in is another matter altogether, but we'll take what we can get.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Although America's upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction could see a newcomer or two join the fold, Canada's auction is actually calling for it. Reportedly, Industry Minister Jim Prentice made known that 40MHz of the 105MHz of spectrum available for bidding would be "set aside for newcomers to the industry," hinting that more competition could eventually lead to lower cellphone rates across the nation. He went on to say that the "introduction of new service providers would help to make Canada's wireless market more dynamic, more competitive, and more innovative," and moreover, only companies that hold less than 10-percent of revenues in that market would be allowed to bid for the luscious 40MHz segment. As expected, big boys in the biz are none too pleased about the announcement, with Telus executive vice-president Janet Yale even going so far as to say that it believed the move "wouldn't be in the best interest of consumers or telecom industry overall." Right.

[Thanks, Andy]

Landing an agreement to create a worldwide mobile broadband standard with the freed up 700MHz band isn't the only good news going on in the spectrum world, as the FCC has also waived a previous regulation that would require winners of the D block segment to not wholesale more than 50-percent of its capacity. Now, the winner will be able to wholesale up to 100-percent of the capacity so long as it abides by the other guidelines surrounding D block, most notable of which is the provision that requires the victorious bidder to "build out a nationwide wireless network that is good enough to meet public safety specifications for coverage and redundancy." The move is seen as one that will widen the range of potential bidders and encourage small business participation, and for consumers, it could offer up more competition in the mobile services marketplace. Sounds like a surefire win-win, eh?

[Via RCRNews, image courtesy of toddemslie]
Read - FCC D block waiver [PDF]
Read - Explanation of D block spectrum

If you've been losing sleep over not knowing precisely what was going to happen to all that spectrum space that will be freed up when the imminent analog-to-digital cutover takes place, your insomnia is about to be (at least partially) cured. The US of A apparently pushed hard for a worldwide consensus on spectrum use -- suggesting that a common approach was more reasonable than each nation choosing separate frequencies for next-generation services -- and sure enough, it ended up getting exactly what it wanted. Apparently, the 700MHz band will now be reserved for a mobile broadband standard accessible throughout much of the globe, including most of North America, Central America, South America, Europe, China, India, South Korea and Japan. Of note, Europe was able to land a concession that enables it to offer up "about half of the bandwidth available for mobile services in their region" compared to what is offered elsewhere, but the agreement definitely makes the forthcoming auction that much more interesting.

[Via RCRNews, image courtesy of toddemslie]