The high-profile spectrum auction ended two weeks ago, but the really interesting information is only starting to come out now that the quiet period has ended. The FCC, which garnered nearly $20 billion from the auction, prohibited the winning companies from saying anything about what they were going to do with the spectrum until 6 p.m. Eastern today. The timing was lousy given that it coincided with the industry's big annual event—CTIA. Arun Sarin, the CEO of Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), which owns about half of Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and happened to be the biggest winner of the auction, even joked about it yesterday, saying everyone will have to wait another 24 hours for an update. Verizon Wireless said today it will hold a Webcast tomorrow to discuss its plans.
Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) also stayed quiet. I met with Qualcomm MediaFLO division yesterday, when they refused to say anything, but today, they announced the spectrum will indeed be used for its MediaFLO TV service. It said it paid $558.1 million for licenses including the E block covering Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Qualcomm said: "These licenses double Qualcomm's 700 MHz spectrum holdings throughout a footprint of more than 68 million people in 28 individual markets," the company said.
With the additional licenses, MediaFLO will be able to deliver additional content and services in these top markets, which is precisely what I chatted with Omar Javaid, the vp of global business opportunities, about. He said already they are starting to see what users prefer, and they were surprised to learn that people didn't want bite-sized content like a lot of people assumed, but preferred full-length TV shows. AT&T (NYSE: T), which is launching in May, even included a channel by Sony (NYSE: SNE) which will play full-length movies. But moving beyond even those basic services, he said they will develop future services, including chat and voting capabilities.
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