Bidding Reaches $18.55 Bln in U.S. Wireless Auction

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Bidding reached $18.55 billion on Friday inthe U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s record-setting auction ofgovernment-owned wireless airwaves, but there were no new offers fortwo large, closely watched slices of spectrum.

The total bidding, which covers five separate blocks of spectrum in the auction, was up from $15.64 billion on Thursday.

There were no new bids on a major slice of the airwaves, known asthe "C" block, which will have to be made accessible using any deviceor software application, under FCC rules. A bid of $4.71 billion, madeon Thursday morning remained the top offer.

Nor were there any new bids Friday on a nationwide piece of thespectrum, known as the "D" block, which must be shared with publicsafety agencies under auction rules set by the agency. A bid of $472million from last week still stood.

The lone $472 million bid for the D block spectrum, which came inthe first round of the auction a week ago, is far below the $1.3billion minimum price set by the FCC. If bidding fails to reach theminimum, the FCC will have to decide whether to re-auction the D blockor possibly modify the network-sharing requirement.

The open-access condition on the C-block spectrum is importantbecause U.S. wireless carriers have traditionally restricted the modelsof cell phones that can be used on their networks and limited thesoftware that can be downloaded onto them, such as ring tones, music orWeb browser software.

But AT&T and Verizon began moving away from that restrictive stance in recent months.

The FCC is keeping bidders’ identities secret until the entireauction ends. But analysts say Verizon Wireless and Internet searchleader Google are the most likely bidders for the C block.

The 700-megahertz signals are valuable because they can go longdistances and penetrate thick walls. The airwaves are being returned bytelevision broadcasters as they move to digital from analog signals inearly 2009.

In addition to the C and D blocks, the other spectrum includes morelocal chunks set aside in blocks designated "A" and "B". The final, "E"block, is considered less useful because it is limited to one-way datatransmission.

The electronic auction will end when no more bids are submitted.

(Reporting by Peter Kaplan, editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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