The AWS-3 auction continued to slow Monday with only 298 bids in round 29, although that was another $460,386,600 bid to push the total to $35,142,156,300.
Even if the auction closed Monday it would be the largest FCC auction take ever (the FCC has been auctioning spectrum since 1994), according to the FCC auctions page, dwarfing the second-biggest total of $18.96 billion for the 700 MHz auction in 2008, which had 1,099 licenses and went a bruising 261 rounds. That also involved broadcast spectrum.
The most recent auction, the H Block auction, had only 176 licenses up for bid and DISH got them all for $1.564 billion, though that took 167 rounds to meet the reserve price, which DISH did not exceed.
The AWS-3 blew past its $10.587 billion reserve last week.
(Photo via Ervins Strauhmanis's Flickr. Image taken on Sept. 19, 2014 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)
