Auction Day 28: AWS auction claims two more victims

The high price of bandwidth in Industry Canada's Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction has claimed two more casualties.A day after RuralCom Corp. decided to give up its hope of acquiring spectrum, SSI Micro Ltd. and Ontario numbered company 768812 Ontario Inc. did the same.SSI Micro was singularly focused on acquiring bandwidth for the Far North, depositing $80,000 for two eligibility points, which was enough to bid on the 10 MHz C-band licence covering the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.The company comfortably controlled the licence from Round 1 until Round 130 when Globalive Communications entered the bidding. Control for the property seesawed for two days between the two companies with SSI Micro ultimately ceding it to the Yak Communications owner when the price of the licence surpassed $100,000.SSI Micro then turned its sites to the 5 MHz I-band licence in the Far North where it battled RuralCom for two days, forcing RuralCom to exit the auction. But SSI Micro would suffer the same fate after it was caught fighting Bell Mobility for control of the property.768812 Ontario had deposited $320,000 early in the auction in hopes of securing the rights to 20 MHz of bandwidth in Sudbury. After bidding moved to stage two, the company then made a play for other northern Ontario properties, including North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Kirkland Lake. By about Round 110, 768812 Ontario realized it might lose out on northern Ontario entirely, prompting it to switch focus to Northern Quebec. It was a short-lived strategy, however, than soon saw the company back bidding on northern Ontario properties.In the end, the bidding simply got too high for the Ontario numbered company: the 10 MHz D-band reserved spectrum for Sudbury nearly reached $775,000 as of Wednesday, July 3.Moving into the seventh week of bidding, Industry Canada's AWS auction will almost certainly end this week, if not today: Friday's last round saw only five new bids. Total auction proceeds still hover around the $4.19-billion mark.

Auction Day 28: AWS auction claims two more victims

News | July 7, 2008

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Auction Day 28: AWS auction claims two more victims

News | July 7, 2008

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