Good news for the Canadian government, and hopefully for Canadian consumers. Their spectrum auction is now approaching the $4 billion mark. This is fueled largely by the big three players, who can bid on 60 percent of the spectrum. The other 40 percent is reserved for new players. The big guys cover over half of the total bill at this point, though there are some rather large bids from newcomers, including one company that has more money in high bids than Bell, and just as much as Telus.

For the big three, we have Rogers at $810.5 million, Telus at $736.3 million, and Bell at $508.2 million. Despite Rogers’ high bids, they control just 47 licenses, while Telus has 50 and Bell has 45. Clearly, this could all change before the end of the auction.

Globative, a Toronto-based outfit, has laid down $736.3 million. They have the high bids on 34 licenses. Quebecor Inc. has laid down just shy of $500 million for just 17 licenses. Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises Wireless Inc. has slapped down $228 million on a mere nine licenses. Then again, Shaw Communications has 19 licenses for $147.6 million, so we shouldn’t read too much into the price per license.

At the auction’s outset, some in the Canadian government were critical of the rules in place, saying it should have been a free-for-all auction, which presumably would have led to a higher auction haul. I’m wondering if they had counted on the bidding getting this high.

Posted By : Joe
Posted at : June 16th, 2008 - 7:39 am
Filed under : Canadian Wireless