Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Much of the interest surrounds the 'C block' that will provide nationwide coverage.
Due largely to lobbying by Google, the C block licence comes with conditions that require the successful bidder to allow customers to use whatever devices and services they choose.
If the maximum bid is less than $US4.6 billion, the auction process will be halted and the C block put back on the market without this condition. However, Google has indicated it is prepared to make a $US4.6 billion bid to ensure that threshold is reached.
So far, bids for the C block are just short of $US3 million. The minimum bid in the next round is in excess of $US3.4 billion.
Another possibility is that the C block will be sold off in regional units if that will fetch a higher aggregate price than a national licence.
The 'D block' - a nationwide chunk of spectrum that must be used to deliver a wireless broadband network to public safety agencies with any spare capacity being available for commercial use - is also attracting attention. A bid of over $US472 million has been received. The minimum bid in the next round is in excess of $US519 million.
The high bids for the various 700MHz licences in total exceeded $US6.1 million at the close of round eight.
Auction rules keep secret the identities of bidders until the process is complete.
The nature of the 700MHz band is such that it operates over relatively long distances and provides good in-building coverage. The spectrum being auctioned is currently used for television, but will become free next year as a result of the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
