FCC Approves More Incentive Auction License Transfers

The FCC has approved the license applications of 15 more winning bidders in the FCC's broadcast incentive forward auction. Those are wireless operators, in this instance mostly smaller ones, whose applications were complete, who had paid their bids in full, and for which no petitions to deny the transfers were filed, the FCC points out. 

The FCC has already granted the licenses of the major players—T-Mobile, Dish and AT&T, who collectively bid billions—and still have more to approve.

The current batch is more in the tens of millions of dollars worth of licenses. 

The broadcast incentive auction raised over $19 billion from 50 winning bidders for 2,776 10 MHz licenses (5 uplink, 5 downlink). 

The latest batch of approved licensees are Carolina West Wireless, Cellular South Licenses, Chariton Valley Telephone, CT Cube, East Kentucky Network, Inland Cellular, LICT Wireless Broadband, NE Colorado Cellular, Northeast Nebraska Telephone, Northern Valley Communications, NSight Spectrum, SAL Spectrum, Spotlight Media, Alaska Wireless Network and Triangle Communications.

The FCC last month had signaled their applications were complete and ready for vetting.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.