Rogers skips Canada's spectrum auction; new players buy in
- While the FCC's recent AWS-3 spectrum auction drew a record $45B from industry leaders, Canada's own AWS-3 auction surprisingly missed participation from one of its biggest: Rogers (RCI -1.2%) elected to buy no new spectrum.
- "We won the beachfront property we wanted last year," says Rogres' Patricia Trott. Rogers paid $3.29 billion for 22 licenses last February.
- The auction raised more than $2.1B and while 10 companies were the qualified bidders, only five picked up new spectrum, much from the other two of the Big Three: Telus (TU -1.8%) paid $1.5B to get 15MHz worth, raising its stake by 16%. Bell (BCE -1.9%) expanded its stake by 4%.
- The sale was designed to favor new competitors, and Wind nearly tripled its allocation by paying minimum bid price ($56M) for blocks in Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia. Eastlink and Videotron also expanded their reach by more than 50%.
