The Federal Communications Commission netted $19.592 billion from its auction of wireless spectrums, including its “crown jewel,” the 700-MHz spectrum being abandoned by broadcast television.

The auction for that spectrum, Auction 73, ended Tuesday afternoon, the FCC reported. “There were no bids, withdrawals or proactive activity rule waivers placed in Round 261. Therefore, Auction 73 has closed under the simultaneous stopping rule,” a posting on the agency’s Web site said. The take for Auction 73 was $4.75 billion.

“The $19.6 billion generated by the auction nearly doubled congressional estimates of $10.2 billion,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said. “All other 68 auctions conducted by the FCC in the past 15 years collectively generated a total of only $19.1 billion in receipts. Even with open-platform and aggressive build-out obligations, each of these blocks sold for more than AWS-1 (Advanced Wireless Service) blocks with comparable bandwidth and license areas.”

Verizon a Likely Winner

The television spectrum is valuable considering

it can travel by towering distances and penetrate walls and structures. That makes it very valuable to wireless providers. Google succeeded in pushing the FCC to adopt open-access rules for the spectrum whether the bidding cleared the $4.6 billion level.

Most analysts believe Google and Verizon were competing for the spectrum, but the FCC will not announce the names of the winners for several weeks yet. Observers believe Google only bid to the point where open-access rules would apply and that Verizon and AT&T have likely acquired licenses to the spectrum.

“When it finally came date to go into the auction, I think they (Google) were pretty firm about wanting to enforce the open-access conditions as much as it could be enforced, but additionally being firm on not really being interested in becoming a network operator,” said Rebecca Arbogast, a principal telecommunications analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. “I think they…

Orginal post by Top Tech News