WNA

Bidding has nearly ceased in the FCC’s H-block Auction 96, which includes 176 economic areas in the spectrum adjacent to Sprint’s current FD-LTE service in the PCS band.

The auction’s total haul now totals $1.53 billion. Dish Network pledged to pay $1.565 billion for all of the 10-megahertz spectrum licenses before the auction began on Jan. 22.

The H Block is a 10 MHz block of paired airwaves that runs from 1915-1920 MHz (for the uplink) and from 1995-2000 MHz (for the downlink). Dish controls spectrum adjacent to a portion of the H Block, called AWS-4. The spectrum also adjoins Sprints FD-LTE service, which also uses 5MHz x 2, in the PCS “G” block.

The U.S. government’s last major spectrum auction was in 2008 for the 700 MHz band. Since then smartphones have taken off, and mobile data use with them.

See Dailywireless: H-Block Auction Starts Today, H-Block Auction Surpasses $456 million, H-Block Auction Winding Down?