The results are in for the FCC spectrum auction. Google has lost the ‘C’ block spectrum bid to Verizon.
On the face of it, this sounds like a loss for Google, but per my earlier post, this is in fact the best possible outcome for Google. Google must have strived hard during the bidding process to loose while at the same time ensuring that a rival firm bid above the $4Billion minimum limit to keep the spectrum ‘open’. The auction ended with Verizon bidding just 3% above the FCC minimum.
‘Open access’ means that any network deployed on these airwaves would have to be open to any device and any application. That is contrary to the cellular carriers’ traditional walled garden strategy where they supplied the equipment and locked customers into their networks and favored their own content.
