The Federal Communications Commission's auction of the 700MHz spectrum, which actually covered the 698-806 MHz part of the wireless spectrum, has generated $19.6 billion for the government. The auction began on January 24 and it raised much more than the congressional estimates of $10.2 billion.

"All other 68 auctions conducted by the FCC in the past 15 years collectively generated a total of only $19.1 billion in receipts. Even with open-platform and aggressive build-out obligations, each of these blocks sold for more than AWS-1 blocks with comparable bandwidth and license areas," said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

However, there have been problems with the auctioning process. Most notably, the D-block, one of the five categories of spectrum put on auction, failed to meet the reserve price of $1.3 billion and, furthermore, failed to attract any bids beyond a $472 million opening bid.

The public safety network was supposed to run on a total of 10 megahertz (763-768 and 793-798 MHz), making up the so-called Block D of the auctioned spectrum.

Prominent wireless startup company Frontline Wireless LLC has bailed out of the FCC auction for the 700MHz spectrum in early January. Frontline was supposed to come up with an upfront payment for the wireless chunk it wanted, a special section of the 700MHz spectrum, the Block D, which was set aside for an emergency communications network. Frontline was the main planner behind the concept of a nationwide communications system which would include the newly freed up frequencies.

Another interesting element is that the C-block, which comes with a requirement for the spectrum to be open to all devices and applications, has well met the reserve price of $4.6 billion. This means that soon there will be nationwide access to wireless Internet. Eight licenses were granted, totaling $6.5 billion in bids.

The winning bidders for blocks A, B, C and E have not yet been named. The auction lasted for a total of 38 days with 261 rounds of bidding. The $19.6 billion goes to the US Treasury and will be used for public safety and digital television programs. The spectrum will be freed in 2009 when television broadcast will switch to digital transmissions.