The Economist has a current article (subscription) subtitled "America's wireless-spectrum auction avoids the pitfalls of Europe's." But that misses the most important point.
It's true US operators are paying less for spectrum in the FCC's current Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) auctions than EU operators paid for their 3G spectrum. Here is the comparison from the Economist article:
On the other hand, the UK & German auctions were in 2000, at the height of the bubble. In addition, EU spectrum is highly regulated – you can only run W-CDMA technology in this spectrum, it's the only spectrum authorized for 3G and there is no subsequent market to buy & sell this spectrum. So existing mobile operators had to win in the auction or go out of business.
But this is not the important story for the AWS auctions. The issue here is no new competitors!
The new spectrum is going to existing wireless players. T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and a Sprint/CableCo joint venture came out on top. Some of the regional licenses are going to second tier players like MetroPCS and Leap Wireless, but nothing much is going to anyone who is not an incumbent mobile operator today.
Today's mobile Internet is a walled garden, in the US and in most of the world. Our best hope for an open mobile Internet is the combination of improving technology and robust competition. The technology roadmaps are clear – for UMTS (HSDPA, HSUPA), for CDMA 2000 (EVDO Rev A, Rev B) and for WiMAX. The competitive situation is more worrisome, given recent consolidation (Sprint-Nextel; Cingular & ATT Wireless; etc.).
The good news is T-Mobile USA appears to be in the game for the long haul, thus mobile competition remains fairly robust – much better than our fixed line duopoly.
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