T-Mobile’s 800 MHz is for sale—who’s gonna buy it?

Dish Network recently revealed that it was not going to buy the 13.5 MHz chunk of nationwide 800 MHz spectrum from T-Mobile. Since then, questions brewed: Who will buy it? Does anyone have $3.59 billion at their disposal? If so, what will they do with it? T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert confirmed the auction has begun. “We have commenced. We have interested parties. We have nonbinding indications of interest,” he said. Dish was given first dibs to the spectrum as part of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, but even after Dish became a subsidiary of EchoStar, it could not come up with the financing. Other parties that have expressed interest in the spectrum include Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company, which could use it to deploy wireless broadband networks for electric utilities. It’s possible that a consortium of utilities could pool their resources, but whether they could do that to the tune of $3.59 billion is questionable.  Another notable interested party is Anterix, the 900 MHz company whose executive chairman is Morgan O’Brien, one of the founders of Nextel Communications.