No airwaves for you! Verizon, AT&T will face bidding limits in incentive auction

The Federal Communications Commission laid out all of its proposed rules for the 2015 controversial broadcast airwave incentive auction, save one. It didn’t address the most contentious rule of them all: whether the countries’ two mega-carriers AT&T and Verizon will have free rein in the auction or face restrictions on how many airwaves they can buy.

The FCC is now taking a whack at the political piñata, and AT&T and Verizon aren’t going to be pleased with what comes out. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has begun circulating proposed rules for low-band spectrum auction -- of which the incentive auction is most definitely one -- that would limit Verizon and AT&T’s ability to bid on all licenses in markets where competition for frequencies is particular intense.

What means in areas where there’s the most demand for mobile broadband airwaves, such as the big cities, the FCC will set aside up to 30 MHz of airwaves for carriers that don’t already own a lot of low-band spectrum.