Tag: auctions

700 MHz: When Will it End

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E Block reached its reserve price in round 44 on Thursday and the FCC announced that it was going to six bidding rounds per day beginning on Friday, Feb. 8.

However, while D Block is probably permanently stalled below its reserve price for Auction 73 and will likely have to be reauctioned, there is still sufficient activity in the auction to expect that it will continue for as much as two more weeks, depending on whether the FCC decides to further accelerate the number of rounds per day. The following table shows the rates of convergence to full clearance over the past six and the past three rounds. These rates are consistent with an auction conclusion in the last week of February or the first week of March if previous auctions are a reasonable guide. However, there have been sufficient anomalies in auction performance in Auction 73, notably high amounts by which A and B Blocks have exceeded their reserve prices and the speed with which these prices have been obtained, which caution us not to rely too much on previous auction behaviour. The FCC has been gradually upping the number of bidding rounds per day and I expect further increases, as the agency seems inclined to press the auction to conclusion.

On the basis of these facts I would estimate at least two, perhaps three more weeks of bidding, primarily in E Block, before we see the end of Auction 73.

700 MHz: More Evidence for Success of Anonymous Bidding Rules

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I’d like to reiterate what fellow Wetmachiner Harold Feld wrote yesterday: the telecoms incumbents’ claims of problems arising from anonymous bidding are nonsense, part of a campaign to sow disinformation lest Auction 73 (700 MHz) and its success persuade the FCC to permanently adopt anonymous bidding rules for its auctions.

I call your attention to this table, which compares the number of bids on each license in B Block in rounds 1-26 of Auction 73 to the number of bids on each comparable CMA in Auction 66 (AWS-1) in rounds 1-26 of that auction. Note that in general the smaller the CMA number, the larger the population of the CMA (e.g., CMA001 is New York City and its immediate environs, CMA002 is the Los Angeles area, etc.).

What is striking about the data presented in this table is threefold. First, significantly more bids are being placed in general in rounds 1-26 in Auction 73 than in Auction 66. Second, extraordinarily more bids are being placed on the smaller and intermediate-size CMAs in Auction 73 than in Auction 66. Third, a much smaller percentage of licenses are receiving no bids in the first 26 rounds in Auction 73 than in Auction 66.

I am hard put to find an explanation of this extraordinary increase in competition, particularly for the smaller and intermediate-size licenses, which does not involve the effects of anonymous bidding. I suggest that the data, even though they do not disclose bidder identities, are entirely consistent with a more vigorous presence of new entrant and non-incumbent bidders who are protected from retaliatory and blocking bidding by large incumbents by anonymous bidding and are, therefore, more willing to engage in strong competition.

The telcos and cablecos can wail and moan to Communications Daily about the “risks” of anonymous bidding to the FCC, but the principal risk of anonymous bidding seems thus far to be the risk that fat-cat telecoms incumbents won’t be able to get all the spectrum in this auction by their usual bullying and exclusionary tactics. There’s no risk at all to the treasury — revenue from the auction is already wildly exceeding pre-auction projections — and there’s no risk that competition will be wan, as the data presented here amply demonstrate.

Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Wireless Incumbent.

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So here we are in the middle of the most intensely competitive auction ever. As you can tell looking at the recent postings by fellow Wetmachiner Greg Rose this auction has dramatically pushed up the amount of money paid by bidders for licenses and has created more intense competition for a broader group of licenses than previous auctions, strongly suggesting that — as Greg and I predicted when we first started pushing anonymous bidding in March 2006 — anonymous bidding eliminates all kinds of targeting, collusion and retaliation that typically held back smaller bidders and allowed larger bidders to pick up licenses for a song. An utter smashing success (at least from the perspective of those who favor using auctions for distribution of licenses), right? Who could have a bad word to say about it?

Answer: All the people who hate anonymous bidding BECAUSE it eliminates the ability to signal, retaliate, and collude and thus makes the auction more competitive. i.e. The incumbent wireless licensees (other than Verizon, which wanted anonymous bidding to avoid being targeted).

More below . . . .

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700 MHz: Indirect Evidence for More New Entrant/Non-Incumbent Activity

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I can’t prove it, but the following table is suggestive that there is significant new entrant/non-incumbent activity over a wide range of licenses, most strikingly in B Block. This table tracks numbers of bids per license by block (and the licenses are further sorted by total number of bids per license) over rounds 1-26 (round 27 will open on Monday).

What is interesting is that there are large numbers of bids on a wide variety of licenses of differing population sizes. Since the incumbents traditionally focus on the higher population area licenses in each block, the relatively high levels of competition over licenses of significantly differing population size suggests that anonymous bidding has emboldened new entrants and non-incumbents to compete more intensely than in earlier auctions (which also accounts, in part, for the larger revenue stream indicated by the higher provisionally winning bids).

It’s not much evidence, but it is an interesting datum, and it appears to show a pattern consistent with higher levels of competition over a wider range of licenses.

Definitely Not Smarter Than the Average Bear

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Much of the press surrounding the first two days of the FCC’s 700 MHz auction has been like this Information Week story. I confess to being both amazed at the shallowness of the reporting and amused at its gloom and doom tone. To hear the press tell it, it’s time to be very bearish on this auction.

A look at historical precedent is salutory. The FCC’s Integrated Spectrum Auction System files for Auction 66 and Auction 73 are the places to start.

At the end of round four in Auction 66 (AWS-1), the high bids for the EAs, CMAs, and REAGs were, respectively, 4.15%, 7.09%, and 12.03% of the final net PWB prices with 47.84% of licenses receiving at least one bid. At the end of round 4 in Auction 73 (700 MHz Band) the high bids for EAs (A and E Blocks), CMAs (B Block), REAGs (C Block), and the nationwide D Block license were, respectively, 31.87%, 43.03%, 39.06%, and 26.99% of reserve price with 83.80% of licenses receiving at least one bid.

Auction 66 netted $13.7 billion. Auction 73 has a reserve price threshold of $10,386,011,520. By any objective criteria Auction 73 is off to a much better start generally than Auction 66 was. The fact that the D block has had only one bid in the first four rounds isn’t terribly unusual; several licenses which eventually went in Auction 66 for very substantial sums had very little early-round action. It’s important to point out that auctions with relatively high reserve prices tend to exhibit slow convergence bidding on reserve price and provide significant incentive to try to obtain the license for as little over reserve price as possible. When this tendency is coupled with the FCC’s bidding increment rules, it is rather obvious that the auction is going to take some serious time and that it’s rather impressive how close to reserve price the bidding is at so early a stage.

Auction 66 ran 161 rounds. I expect Auction 73 to run at least 100 rounds, and probably significantly longer. It is much too early to announce that the results of Auction 73 are disappointing… unless you appear to know as little about how FCC spectrum auctions actually work as much of the press does.