WNA

The auction of the 1900 MHz PCS H Block is one week old, but it’s already becoming apparent to analysts that Dish Network is set to capture the spectrum in short order, reports Fierce Wireless.

The FCC auction (auction 96 and live bidding results), is expected to generate over $1.6 billion for the US Treasury.

Dish has pledged to bid, at minimum, $1.56 billion, or $0.50/MHz-POP, for the entire auction (though it does not have to bid that for each license). Of the 176 licenses up for auction, 144 have posted winning bids so far and 32 have not.

According to Tim Farrar, Dish can outbid any company for any individual licenses because it knows it will not get outbid and can make up for bidding heavily on one license by bidding a lower amount on another.

According to Farrar:

“By sometime tomorrow morning, it looks like no other players will have any remaining eligibility and it will be left to DISH to raise the price step by step to the $1.564B minimum price and the auction will be done. Indeed that seems to already be happening, with DISH renewing its bidding on NY and LA in Round 17 as any potential competition ebbed away.”