January 31st, 20084.7B Bid Triggers Open Access Rule in US Spectrum Auction
After getting off to a slow start, the C block of the U.S. 700MHz spectrum auction has just crossed the magical 4.64B reserve price. This means whoever wins the spectrum (the bidders are as yet kept secret by the FCC), will be subject to two important “openness” regulations requiring open access to devices and to applications used on the network. Though the leading bidder may/may not be Google, this is automatically a win for the goog, as it opens the door to the Android platform and likely good news as well for American consumers and businesses.
Canada has yet to set the rules (or a specific timeline) for own 700MHz auction, though the precedent is for Canada to follow spectrum U.S. policy closely – in the interest of interoperability and copying generally whatever seems to be working down south.
4.7B is a lot of money.
photo: jenn_jenn
