It is nice to see our government making money on nothing but air. The 700MHz auction has been ongoing since January 24th and it seems it has finally come to close. According to Engadet In 10 days the FCC will announce who has won which parts of the spectrum. The whole wireless spectrum being offered up earned the government $19.6 Billion dollars in total.
There was a fierce debate about the open access rules of the c-block spectrum in which Google helped persuade the FCC into using two out of their four suggestions. With Google’s promise to bid $4.6 Billion, the FCC in turn would require open access to applications and devices to whomever won the auction.
Apparently a $4.75 Billion dollar bid has won the c-block portion in what many hoped would become the “third pipe” of broadband access to the home along with cable and telephone. Without full open access however, and Verizon rumored to have won the auction it is safe to say this will not happen.
However, this is still a huge plus for open access proponents allowing various companies to make devices and applications that can freely access and use this spectrum for various purposes; like carrier free phones and devices, and applications that work regardless of network.
Popularity: 7% [?]
You Should Also Check Out These Post:
- Razer Arctosa Review
- HD4890: First 1GHz Graphics Card
- OCZ Debuts Gaming Mice; Behemoth and Eclipse
- Engadget's First Look At The Mamba
- Phenom II X3. Now with 4 cores
SUBSCRIBE 
FramesPerSecond Labs consists of a small team of dedicated, hardware enthusiast, PC gamers who want to bring the best there is to offer in hardware reviews and advice for gamers. The team at FPSLabs strives to achieve this through integrity, passion, and a love for the one thing that matters most... the current and future FPSLabs community...
Google did its share with the 4.6B bid and although I’m not up to date on the details of 700MHz, I hope Verizon does some good with it. They’re good in my book because of FiOS (my friend here in SoCal has it at his house and let’s just say it’s as good as people say it is). Well I might be a tad bit bias because I have monitoring-all-my-crap–and-not-letting-me-P2P Comcast at home in NorCal, but who wouldn’t be bias if they had Comcast?