By Howard Solomon
Assistant Editor, Network World Canada
You'd think that with the AWS spectrum auction having been under increasingly tighter rules for the past three days, the 19 remaining spenders would have figured Friday at 5 p.m. would be a great time to give it up and reflect on what they've created. Nope. They'll be back at it Monday. I suppose that with $3.653 billion on the table -- and seemingly unlimited funds -- why call it quits?Friday's last three round saw the ante go up by $10.6 million, $12.1 million and $13.2 million respectively. In the last round there were 80 new high bids, so obviously the gang weren't thinking about the cottage.
For those trying to make sense of things among the new entrants, at the end of Friday Globalive had the largest number of high bids, 41, followed by Bragg Communications (which does business as the Maritimes' Eastlink Cable), with 25, Alberta's Shaw Communications with 19, Videotron owner Quebecor with 16 and DAVE with 10.
However, not all spectrum is created equal. Globalive's spectrum would have covered 34 million people across the country, whereas Quebecor's far fewer licences would have covered 25 million because its spectrum is concentrated in Quebec, and includes the high bid on 10Mhz over Toronto. DAVE's high bid spectrum so far covers 11 million. Bragg, looking to focus on the less populated Maritimes and small communities Eastlink services, covers 9.6 million people.
And so it continues ...