Auction Day 12: Battles for small town spectrum take centre stage; auction revenue tops $3.5 billion

With the seesaw competition for Canada's biggest cities winding down, the final battle is underway for control of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum in small town Canada. While some fights still wage on for larger centres such as Quebec City, Montreal Ottawa/Outaouais, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, the spotlight is shifting to smaller markets where newcomers Bragg Communications and Globalive Communications continue to hold out against the larger incumbents. This was plainly evident in Wednesday's first round of bidding where 79 new bids and 73 new standing high bids only produced a 0.38% increase in total standing high bids, rising a little less than $13 million to $3.69 billion. Of all the 73 standing high bids in Round 45, a half dozen were for larger centres. While the following round produced an anomalous 3.34% increase in revenue, the rest of Wednesday's rounds saw revenue increases of between 0.35% and 0.45%. The reason for the small revenue increase is the cost of these licences is still low even though there has been increased activity on these smaller properties. Bragg and Globalive are leading the smaller region battles as the two new entrant wannabes who continue to hold their own against the wireless incumbents and larger new entrant participants. As previously noted by Report on Wireless, it appears Bragg, the owner of cable, Internet and telephony provider EastLink, is coveting at least 30 MHz of spectrum in Atlantic Canada in addition to upwards of 20 MHz of spectrum in some markets in Northern Ontario and Alberta. The company continues to make a strong play for the 20 MHz A-band licences covering Atlantic Canada and has been battling Rogers Communications for those properties for days. The move to 100% has forced the company to bid for the Atlantic Canadian licences in other bands as well as on other licences of interest, particularly the Sudbury and Kirkland Lake licences. For its part, Globalive wants to grab as much spectrum as it possible can in some of the larger and mid-market areas. Notably, it has been battling Vidéotron for days over properties in Quebec, including 10 MHz D-band Montreal licence and the 20 MHz B-band and 10 MHz C-band licences for Southern Quebec. The Yak Communications owner has assembled a solid lineup of licences so far that includes key parts of the country including Southern Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and most of Atlantic Canada. The gaps in its national network - New Brunswick, Ottawa and surrounding area, Manitoba outside of Winnipeg and the Saskatoon and Moose Jaw licences in Saskatchewan - are where the company's battles are fiercest. Will Globalive be satisfied with what it has or will it continue to vie for those missing pieces of its national licence puzzle? The next few days will tell. Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises Wireless (DAVE) had stayed under the radar for the most part after taking a hit in eligibility points. In the process, it quietly accumulated some solid properties in Western Canada, including Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and Edmonton to go along with its Southern Ontario licence. But that changed in Round 49, when Bragg took over some of DAVE's smaller properties in Ontario. Despite a shift in the major battles to small town Canada, the intensity of bidding remains quite active among new entrants. All are trying to capture a piece of Canada's airwaves and appear willing to go head-to-head with each other and the incumbent wireless carriers over reserved and ILEC spectrum alike. Day 12 saw the total auction haul surpass $3.5 billion.

Auction Day 12: Battles for small town spectrum take centre stage; auction revenue tops $3.5 billion

News | 06/12/2008 1:27 pm EDT

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