The 700 MHz Club

The Federal Communications Commission’s highly anticipated 700-MHz spectrum auction kicked off last week, and after almost three days of bidding, the tally stands at just over $4.4 billion.

The hottest bidding action continues to be around the highly prized “C” block spectrum, which could be used to build a new national wireless broadband network. As of this writing, total potential winning bids for the C-block licenses stand at just over $2.15 billion. The FCC won’t say who placed those bids, though. It’s keeping bidder identities under wraps in order to “reduce the potential for anticompetitive bidding behavior.”

It’s a safe bet, however, that it was placed by a major player like AT&T, Verizon or Google, which analysts believe may be bidding not to win the spectrum, but to drive its selling price to $4.6 billion to ensure the FCC imposes open-network requirements on it.