I’ve been following the FCC Spectrum Auction for a while now – and I nearly missed it. It starts tomorrow (Thursday Jan 24). You can follow the auctions online.

Thanks to Bernadine Joselyn for sending me this recent story from National Public Radio on the Wireless Spectrum. It’s an interview with Timothy Wu on the spectrum auction, which is happening this week. (It’s a quick, painless listen if the topic is new to you.)

It’s a great intro interview. They bring up Google’s interest in the auction. I wonder if anyone would be paying as much attention if Google weren’t interested. Well, industry-wise there’d be attention, but in the popular media would there?

Verizon would like to build a 4G network. Google would like to be a giant network. But both have agreed to create an open access network should they win the auction, which is great. (The FCC requires this open access aspect – in fact they seemed to do it at Google’s request.)

In the NY Times

The New York Times ran a story on the Spectrum Auction yesterday. News to me was the fact that Google is not expected to win the auction. (I didn’t know either way.) Here’s a quick run down on the nitty gritty from the NY Times:

The F.C.C. has set a minimum price of $10 billion for five blocks of licenses — 1,099 in all. The largest amount received by the commission in a previous license spectrum auction was $13.7 billion in 2006. Some analysts believe that record could be exceeded when this so-called 700 megahertz auction is completed in the next few months.

Each day, the commission will post the leading bids, but only the amount bid, not the names of the leading bidders.