FCC spectrum auction ends

Lynne Kiesling

Courtesy of Slashdot, and following up on Mike's spectrum auction post from earlier this month, the 700 MHz spectrum auction has come to a close. From the New York Times blog post mentioned in the Slashdot article:

The winning bids totaled $19,592,420,000. That's nearly double the amount the commission had hoped to raise from the spectrum being abandoned next year as television stations switch to new frequencies. On the scale of billions, the total has hardly changed in a month. But bidding continued on little blocks of frequencies around the country that cellphone companies are using to fill in gaps in their service. The last bid in the auction was $91,000 for frequencies around Vieques, P.R.