The auction raised $19.6 billion, more than the Commission ever hoped and the prime chunks went to the big internet carriers. Verizon Wireless bought C Block, the largest, with $9.6 billion, while AT&T bid a total of $6.6 billion to pick up the B Block. EchoStar Corp.’s Frontier Wireless LLC made a $712 million bid and Qualcomm totaled $558 million.

Google Inc. didn’t win any license, but it is pushing hard to allow the unlicensed use of white spaces, or bands of unused spectrum between television channels. "It seems Android would be a very nice match for the white spaces," Google attorney Richard Whitt said during a conference call with reporters.

Whitt claims that Google is ready to help for free companies who want to develop white space devices by sharing its expertise. Google, which is also part of the White Spaces Coalition, has done its own white-spaces testing and submitted its results to the FCC in December. Other members include Dell, HP, Intel, Philips (which managed to demonstrate working prototypes to the FCC), Earthlink, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics.

Efforts to use white spaces between digital channels may impact wireless microphones and other technologies that have historically relied on these frequencies. This technical inconvenience has theoretical workarounds, but it remains to be seen how they will perform in real life applications.

The technology is also opposed by groups of companies for various financial and technical reasons. The opponents include mobile-phone operators such as Sprint Nextel Corp and a coalition of television broadcasters that includes representatives from General Electric Co.'s NBC and CBS Corp.

"It is an unfortunate, yet not surprising fact that some entities prefer the comfort of the past to the promise of the future, and use their influence to convince policymakers to protect legacy applications -- at any and all costs," Google said in its letter to the FCC.

The federal government’s 700-MHz auction has drawn mixed reactions. Some were unhappy with the fact that the auction was won by the large incumbent carriers, other showed their contempt with the initiative which is a first step toward giving consumers access to a truly open wireless network.

The FCC rules on the block issued last year forbids Verizon to halt or slow down the traffic from competing carriers that use the network. The rules also prevent the carrier from discriminating against devices trying to connect to the network.