All incumbents sign up for next spectrum auction

Canada's three national wireless carriers and regional players have applied to be part of the next spectrum auction, one intended to deal with licences that went unsold in this year's AWS-3 auction and last year's sale of 700 MHz spectrum. A posting on Industry Canada's website, dated for Tuesday, showed BCE Inc., Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. as applicants for the auction, which is scheduled to start Aug. 25. Manitoba Telecom Services Inc., Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. and northern Internet service provider SSi Micro Ltd. were also listed. Confirmation of the status of these applicants' is due Thursday, according to a schedule on the government department's website. Participants were required to submit their applications by last Thursday, along with refundable deposits equal to the opening bids for the licence or licences they seek to purchase. Opening bid prices range from $1.1 million for each of the three licences for AWS-3 spectrum in Manitoba to as little as $16,000 for the same kind of spectrum in Nunavut. All 700 MHz licences have opening-bid prices in the $100,000 range. For this next auction, one unsold licence for the North in the 2014 700 MHz auction has been divvied up into one licence each for the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut. Three unsold licences for the North, Manitoba and Saskatchewan from the AWS-3 auction in March have been made into a total of 15 licences — three each for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the N.W.T., the Yukon and Nunavut. As outlined in the finalized framework released last month for the upcoming auction, rules from the original 700 MHz sale that limited the largest carriers to one block each of the four so-called prime blocks of spectrum in each region will remain in place for this type of spectrum. Since Bell and Telus each purchased one of these blocks in the North during last year's auction, Rogers is left as the only incumbent qualified to bid on this type of spectrum in the next auction. For the AWS-3 spectrum in this auction, the previous rule that reserved 60 per cent of the spectrum available for so-called operating new entrants is not in effect. This auction of residual spectrum in the coming weeks will use a sealed-bid format with results due two days — on Aug. 27 — after the auction starts. The auction will mark the fourth one held by Industry Canada since early 2014, which also includes a sale of 2500 MHz spectrum that was completed in May. The government has said these auctions have increased the amount of spectrum available for mobile services in Canada by 60 per cent. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Shruti Shekar at sshekar@thewirereport.ca

All incumbents sign up for next spectrum auction

News | August 12, 2015

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All incumbents sign up for next spectrum auction

News | August 12, 2015

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