It’s auction time! FCC preps for first mobile airwave free-for-all in 5 years

The last time the Federal Communications Commission put a serious chunk of mobile frequencies on the auction block, George Bush was still President.

After a five-year hiatus, the Federal Communications Commission is preparing to put a significant chunk of mobile airwaves up for sale. It’s targeting January for the opening bids on newly minted 1900 MHz PCS airwaves, the same spectrum most of our mobile voice and 3G data networks use today. The spectrum in question, called the PCS H-block, is really a tiny hunk of spectrum: just 10 MHz nationwide divided into 176 discrete geographical licenses. Only a single operator could use these frequencies in any given city to add capacity to an LTE or 3G network.