Dish Network to Bid in Spectrum Auction Next Month

Dish Network will bid for spectrum in a federal auction scheduled for January 2014 and won't face competition from the nation's top cellphone carriers, according to a published list.

The Federal Communications Commission said 34 companies signed up to bid at the auction Jan. 22, 2014. The list includes a host of smaller wireless carriers and investors, but not Sprint or T-Mobile US., two nationwide cellphone carriers that earlier were seen as possible bidders but more recently were viewed as likely to sit out the auction. The list also doesn't include AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the top two nationwide cellphone carriers. The H Block auction stands to be the biggest sale of commercially useful US frequencies since 2008 -- the year after Apple introduced the iPhone and helped ignite a surge in demand for wireless data. Applicants unveiled include “no big names to challenge Ergen,” Walter Piecyk, a New York-based analyst with BTIG LLC, said in a blog post.