India will have it’s 3G spectrum auctioned off in January. According to AP the auction will be held on January 15th, 2009 and it will be open to all existing operators. The reserve price is 20.20 billion rupees but I am sure we will see lots of operators battling for that 3G spectrum. Who will win what and how much will they pay? Stick with us through January and find out!

The FCC agreed to the usage of that White Space spectrum and people assumed that free nationwide wireless Internet access will arrive with that spectrum. But guess who shot down the project? The White House!

The FCC was supposed to vote next week on a plan to auction that 25MHz of spectrum from 2155MHz to 2180MHz band. The final buyers would have been required to offer free wireless broadband service but that’s not going to happen now.

The representative of the White House, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said:

The administration believes that the (airwaves) should be auctioned without price or product mandate. The history of FCC spectrum auctions has shown that the potential for problems increases in instances where licensing is overly prescriptive or designed around unproven business models.

What will happen next? Well the FCC is considering the White House point of view but in the same time it wants free Internet access for the masses. We’ll keep you updated!

via Yahoo

Here’s some good news for cell phone and wireless device users: the FCC approved rules intended to give people a greater choice, thanks to the completion of an airwaves auction next year. The auction will have to take place within January 28, 2008. The so-called open access provision allows for customers to use whatever phone and software they want on as much as one-third of the spectrum to be auctioned.

Another provision that mandated a licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis did not make it, pushing Google out of the bidding (not that the company has ruled it out completely, of course). The bidding proceeds will be in the range of US $10-15 billion, with a total of 62 MHz being auctioned off. 22 MHz will be open access.

Television broadcasters will occupy the spectrum until Feb 2009.

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