IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/iepoli/v21y2009i2p115-127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Too many goals: Problems with the 700Â MHz auction

Author

Listed:
  • Bazelon, Coleman

Abstract

In early 2008, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducted its largest auction of radio spectrum licenses. The auctioned 700Â MHz spectrum bands represented a large part of the US's digital dividend, which was created by transitioning to more efficient digital television broadcasts. The FCC set out to accomplish many laudable goals with the 700Â MHz auction such as promoting new entry and rural deployments in wireless broadband, creating a band of commercial spectrum with requirements for open access, and creating a nationwide interoperable public safety network. Unfortunately, poor 700Â MHz band license configurations and auction rules for their assignment prevented the FCC from meeting most of its goals. The two largest national wireless incumbents won most of the licensed frequencies so there will be no new national entrants, rural build-out is unlikely to be promoted, and the spectrum band set aside to aid the development of a public-private partnership for public safety is still unassigned. Furthermore, the large variation in prices within the auction does not support the notion that the auction assigned licenses efficiently.

Suggested Citation

  • Bazelon, Coleman, 2009. "Too many goals: Problems with the 700Â MHz auction," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 115-127, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:21:y:2009:i:2:p:115-127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6245(09)00019-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Bulow & Jonathan Levin & Paul Milgrom, 2009. "Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions," NBER Working Papers 14765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anker, Peter, 2017. "From spectrum management to spectrum governance," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 486-497.
    2. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & David C. Parkes & Richard Steinberg, 2024. "Combinatorial Auctions in Practice," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 517-553, June.
    3. Bazelon, Coleman & McHenry, Giulia, 2013. "Spectrum value," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 737-747.
    4. Gary Madden & Hiroaki Suenaga, 2017. "The determinants of price in 3G spectrum auctions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(32), pages 3129-3140, July.
    5. Saint, Martin & Brown, Timothy X, 2019. "A dynamic policy license for flexible spectrum management," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 23-37.
    6. Peter Cramton & Evan Kwerel & Gregory Rosston & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2011. "Using Spectrum Auctions to Enhance Competition in Wireless Services," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 167-188.
    7. Thomas W. Hazlett & David Porter & Vernon Smith, 2011. "Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity of Ronald Coase," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 125-165.
    8. Gary Madden & Erik Bohlin & Paitoon Kraipornsak & Thien Tran, 2014. "The determinants of prices in the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(17), pages 1953-1960, June.
    9. Gregory Rosston, 2014. "Increasing the Efficiency of Spectrum Allocation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 45(3), pages 221-243, November.
    10. Thomas W. Hazlett & Joshua D. Wright, 2017. "The Effect of Regulation on Broadband Markets: Evaluating the Empirical Evidence in the FCC’s 2015 “Open Internet” Order," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 50(4), pages 487-507, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Le, Phuong, 2018. "Pareto optimal budgeted combinatorial auctions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), May.
    2. Matoso, Rafael & Rezende, Marcelo, 2014. "Asymmetric information in oil and gas lease auctions with a national company," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 72-82.
    3. Sridhar, V. & Prasad, Rohit, 2021. "Analysis of spectrum pricing for commercial mobile services: A cross country study," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(9).
    4. Mölleryd, Bengt G. & Markendahl, Jan, 2014. "Analysis of spectrum auctions in India—An application of the opportunity cost approach to explain large variations in spectrum prices," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 236-247.
    5. Mo Xiao & Zhe Yuan, 2022. "License Complementarity and Package Bidding: US Spectrum Auctions," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 420-464, November.
    6. Phuong Le, 2017. "Mechanisms for combinatorial auctions with budget constraints," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 21(1), pages 1-31, March.
    7. Peter Cramton, 2013. "Spectrum Auction Design," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 42(2), pages 161-190, March.
    8. Burkett, Justin, 2016. "Optimally constraining a bidder using a simple budget," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(1), January.
    9. Ghosh, Gagan & Liu, Heng, 2019. "Sequential second-price auctions with private budgets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 611-632.
    10. Thomas W. Hazlett & David Porter & Vernon Smith, 2011. "Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity of Ronald Coase," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 125-165.
    11. Burkett, Justin, 2015. "Endogenous budget constraints in auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PA), pages 1-20.
    12. Ghosh, Gagan, 2021. "Simultaneous auctions with budgets: Equilibrium existence and characterization," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 75-93.
    13. Pallab Sanyal, 2016. "Characteristics and Economic Consequences of Jump Bids in Combinatorial Auctions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 347-364, June.
    14. Le, Phuong, 2015. "Mechanisms for Combinatorial Auctions with Budget Constraints," MPRA Paper 66292, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Kazumori, Eiichiro & Belch, Yaakov, 2019. "t-Tree: The Tokyo toolbox for large-scale combinatorial auction experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    16. Hu, Luke & Wolfstetter, Elmar G., 2012. "License auctions with exit (and entry) options: Alternative remedies for the exposure problem," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 394, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    17. Carlos A. Manzanares & Ying Jiang & Patrick Bajari, 2015. "Improving Policy Functions in High-Dimensional Dynamic Games," NBER Working Papers 21124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Justin E. Burkett & Emel Filiz-Ozbay, 2017. "An experiment on auctions with endogenous budget constraints," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(4), pages 973-1006, December.
    19. Gary Madden & Erik Bohlin & Paitoon Kraipornsak & Thien Tran, 2014. "The determinants of prices in the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(17), pages 1953-1960, June.
    20. Bichler, Martin & Goeree, Jacob K., 2017. "Frontiers in spectrum auction design," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 372-391.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Spectrum Auctions;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:21:y:2009:i:2:p:115-127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505549 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.