Wirelessnorth.ca

For several rounds yesterday the spectrum auction was down to one single new bid. We were almost there. Then it appeared someones (I blame Rogers) had had the cunning plan all along of patiently waiting it out until the other bidders had spent and carefully allocated every last dime of all the spectrum money they could finance – before swooping in and trying to steal off a bunch of obscure market licences when they though no one was looking. Rogers even withdrew some bids on the [cheap and considered sortof useless] G band which (maybe?) they were just hanging onto just for the eligibility points to cause this sort of trouble later.

And so, the battle for Cornwall began. Which then spread to Coburg, Brockville, then Peterborough and before you knew even Moosejaw were in play again.

From mere tens of thousands of incremental bidding per round we’re back up to half a dozen bids every round and 550,000CAD of new money just last round (251). Watch for all hell to break loose if the contagion spreads to the long-settled slices over Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.

Have you ever watched a box of kittens try to take a nap? They’ll be almost all out then the last one to settle down will catastrophically flick just the tip of his tail, a second kitten -awake in an instant to the irresistible to motion- pounces on the first, then a third kitten is all over the second one.. and in a second there’s tiny cats flying everywhere.

In other news, the auction teams won’t be getting out of their war rooms to the cottage early this weekend afterall.

Well, that’s not entirely true, Industry Canada graciously shortened the schedule to 5:25pm from 5:30 this afternoon.

Total auction revenues have now exceeded 4.2Billion.