Aloha Partners called on the FCC to resume making bidder information...
Aloha Partners called on the FCC to resume making bidder information available after each round, starting with auction 92 this summer of 16 700 MHz licenses. The FCC required disclosure of bidder information for auctions through 2008, when it decided…
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to keep bidding anonymous starting with the first 700 MHz auction. “While it is possible that there may be some economic benefit to anonymous bidding, there are also a number of major drawbacks,” Aloha said. “One of the major advantages of a ’transparent’ bidding approach is that the participants can self-police to assure that the rules are being followed.” With anonymous bidding, “only the Bureau staff can see what is going on and often times they do not have the resources to appreciate all the implications of different bidders’ actions.” Aloha said it had concluded that a bidder used 85 million more bidding units than it had available to buy licenses. “This error resulted in the Bidder buying over $2 Billion worth of licenses that it did not have eligibility to purchase,” the company said. The 700 MHz Block A Good Faith Purchasers Alliance, meanwhile, urged that the FCC require all equipment used on spectrum sold in the auction to work on the other 700 MHz bands. The group is made up of Cellular South, Cavalier Wireless and King Street Wireless.