Sprint pulls out of H Block bidding

[nelson61]

The FCC is auctioning off their first major addition to wireless spectrum in early January (the H Block Spectrum).

Dish has been aggressively pursing the spectrum and their major potential competitor (Sprint) pulled out of bidding today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...-of-u-s-airwaves-auction-now-led-by-dish.html

Charlie was interviewed in the last week or so and said he saw the market as wireless video and that the existing wireless providers already were doing a good job of serving the cell phone market.

Dish made a power point presentation a few months back showing that the spectrum they are accumulating could be used to establish a wireless video (TV) streaming service where they broadcast a suite of channels for wireless reception for a fixed monthly fee. This type of service would have no usage cap since all users would be receiving the same data stream containing all the channels, similar to satellite reception.

 

[TheKrell]

Unfortunately the domain "wirelessguys" is already taken.

 

[dare2be]

How about terrestrialguys?

 

[TheKrell]

How about terrestrialguys?

I like it, but it's not evocative. Wirelessvideoguys.com is also still available...

 

[Stargazer]

I can see some advantages of the cell phone tv reception. One, you can take your tv anywhere, if they will have enough locations to make it accessible. Two, it would be a much easier install process (perhaps self install). Perhaps a plug and play. Three, smaller antenna. This will help with the self install and perhaps attract customers that normally would not be able to receive the service due to restrictions or those that do not want to hang a satellite dish on their home. Four, they could bundle their service if they can find enough bandwidth to do so.

 

[mike123abc]

The feds of course want a pretty penny for the spectrum. I wonder if they will lower the reserve price now that Dish could be the only bidder. The reserve price is 1.56 billion.

Sprint does not need the spectrum. It has the large tract of Clearwire spectrum to develop, and does not need to pay big $$ for a small block, 1.56 billion will buy a lot of cell tower upgrades to use the Clearwire spectrum.

Dish of course is running into the deadline problem of being able to use the spectrum they already have. They are already asking for extensions from the FCC as they look for some way to get access to a lot of cell towers to get their network up and running.