BULLETIN: ROUND 318 ENDED THIS MORNING WITH NO MORE BIDS. INDUSTRY CANADA HAS TOLD BIDDERS THAT IF IT DOESN'T HEAR FROM ANYONE WANTING TO ENACT A PRO-ACTIVE WAIVER BY 10:45 A.M. EASTERN. IT WILL DECLARE THE AUCTION OVER.
(EACH BIDDER HAS FIVE WAIVERS, WHICH ALLOWS THEM TO NOT BE PENALZIED FOR NOT SUBMITTING A BID IN A ROUND)
AN UNKNOWN BIDDER DID ASK FOR A WAIVER, SO THE AUCTION WILL CONTINUE AT 11:55 A.M. EASTERN (for what happened after, see below)
So near and yet so far.
That’s what the end of the AWS spectrum auction has seemed in the past two weeks. The action slows to bids being increased on one or two licences. Surely that’s a sign the participants are satisfied with their holdings and the auction is on the verge of ending? However, looks can be deceiving.
Take this week, for example. In Tuesday’s round 284, bidding increased by a mere $90,000 and on one piece of spectrum. That was enough.
That licence was the 20Mhz spectrum over Cornwall, Ont., strategic because it covers part of Hwy. 401 between Toronto and Montreal. Incumbent Rogers Communications and newcomer Globalive Wireless have been battling over it since the opening gun May 27.
Globalive had held it for some 40 rounds with a bid of $1.48 million, but Rogers suddenly topped it with $1.57 million and as of Thursday afternoon still had it. Not a fatal loss to Globalive, because it retained the 10MHz Cornwall spectrum. But for some reason that set off a ripple of activity for the past two days.
Today the auction enters day 39 with the 15 remaining bidders having pushed the total of high bids to $4.221 billion.
In many ways the situation among the new entrants hasn’t changed in two weeks: Globalive Wireless has spectrum across the country except in the Montreal area, Shaw Communications is strong in the West, Quebecor dominates Quebec, Bragg Communications is healthy in the Maritimes. But here and there the bidding was extremely strategic.
Much of Thursday’s action was between Rogers, Globalive and Bell Mobility, except when SaskTel withdrew its $31.5 million high bid for the 20MHz licence over Saskatoon – its home turf – ceding it to Telus for several rounds. Then late Thursday Telus withdrew its bid and as of the end of the day it lay untouched. But in Friday's first round, Telus put its high bid back.
Meanwhile Maritimes cableco Bragg Communications began to get territorial, snatching high bids on 10Mhz spectrum from SaskTel for southern and western New Brunswick that the prairie telco held for ages, and eastern New Brunswick from Globalive. Bragg held the three licences for the next seven rounds.
[What did SaskTel want with east coast spectrum? Perhaps, one industry analyst suggests, it will be needed if SaskTel can buy Halifax-based Bell Aliant from BCE Inc., which is rumoured to want to spin off non-core assets. Aliant’s wireless division went to BCE last year in a transfer of assets when Bell Aliant became an income trust. In return, Aliant got some landlines.]
At the same time Globalive stuck its nose for one round into three pieces of spectrum long held separately by Rogers, Telus and Bell, who were having none of it.
Amit Kaminer, a telecommunications analyst with the SeaBoard Group, says that while most of the licences are settled, there is method to this madness. Many of the new entrants are “trying to connect the dots” between the licences they hold, he said Thursday, attempting to get a piece here and there to make their holdings make more sense.
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