January 31st, 2008
Google wins 700mhz FCC auction
Of course there is no way yet to say if Google is the current high bidder, but we do know for sure that Google has won. The auction has now surpassed the reserve price of $4.6bn (sitting at $4.7bn) according to the New York Times. This is significant because now the winner of this auction, even if it’s not Google, has to “follow the rules” that Google proposed. What are the rules? the FCC will force the winning bidder to allow any device from other carriers to run any applications on their network — perfect for the Open Handset Alliance.
If there is only one bidder left in the auction, there will likely be no more bids, but according to the New York Times article, we should know more by this afternoon.
For complex reasons, if no new bid in the first auction arrives this morning, it would mean almost certainly that only one company is left in the bidding. With this bid, we still don’t know. But we should know more early this afternoon. If there is, in fact, only one bidder, it would have no logical reason to bid any more, now that it has hit the $4.6 billion minimum. If another bidder is still interested, it will have to keep bidding today.
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
