[agentHibby]

On August 9th 2006 will be the first AWS auction.

AWS stands for Advanced Wireless Services

The phone will transmit below PCS on 1710-1755 MHz
The Base Station will transmit to the phone above PCS 2110-2155 MHz

This will be 90 MHz of airwaves being auctioned across America.

Each provider will be required to send out a 3g (or faster) signal so that means anything is approved by the FCC that can go 144kps or faster. CDMA2000 1XRTT is the slowest that can be used. Most providers will probably be using EV-DO or W-CDMA with HSDPA at the start.
Analog and 2G wireless signals are not prohibited on AWS band, but can be sent out along with a 3G signal (highly unlike this will ever happen).

How the auction works.
They're 6 Blocks A,B,C,D,E,F

The bidding goes by the population that the license covers, times by the MHz of the license, then times by bidding amount.

Example
If are going to big on a license that has 1 million people and it is a 10 MHz license and you put up $1 as the bid price then it would be 1,000,000*10*1 = $10 million
If I upped my bid to $1.50 then it would be 1,000,000*10*1.50 = $15 million

So you can see if there is a bidding war the price for a license can go up way fast!!

The auction will have rounds in witch the providers will place bids. Once the round is over you can see on the FCC website who is winning a license. The auction will start with 2 Rounds per day. 1st at 10am Eastern - 12pm Noon then 2pm Eastern - 4pm. As the auction progresses the amount of rounds will per day will increase and amount of time to bid during each round will shorten.

The auction will end when there is a round in witch nobody places a bid. When the auction closes the highest bidder will receive the license. The company that wins the license will have to pay for it and build a network in a timely manner.

Here is a layout of AWS

Block Frequencies              Bandwidth     Boundaries   #Licenses
A 1710-1720 and 2110-2120 MHz    20 MHz       Cellular       734
B 1720-1730 and 2120-2130 MHz    20 MHz       EA             176
C 1730-1735 and 2130-2135 MHz    10 MHz       EA             176
D 1735-1740 and 2135-2140 MHz    10 MHz       REAG           12
E 1740-1745 and 2140-2145 MHz    10 MHz       REAG           12
F 1745-1755 and 2145-2155 MHz    20 MHz       REAG           12

The A Block will have the same boundaries as Cellular (850 MHz) and will follow cellular buildout rules. This means if you are in a small rural town in a rural market, and a new provider wins the AWS auction for your market; they will have to build a network to cover most if not all the market in about 5 years.

The B and C blocks will follow Economic Areas (EA) boundaries. These licenses will be a little bigger (in most cases) than the PCS licenses for Basic Trading Areas (BTA).

The D, E, F block will follow Regional Economic Area Groupings (REAG). These licenses are very big in size. They will only be going to big companies because most of the licenses will go for over $1 billion.

Some providers in the auction have a partner bidding for them. For example US Cellular is in this auction. The partner that is bidding for them is Barat Wireless, L.P. Most of the bigger companies like T-Mobile, Cingular, Verizon are listed under there own names.

Here is a list of who is in the auction

Here is a list of what license the providers are wanting to bid on (this is a 3 Meg Exel file)

As far as I know Alltel is not in this auction and does not have a partner to bid for them.

I know this is allot, but I hope it helps in understanding this auction that is coming up.