It appears that today may see the end of bidding in the AWS spectrum auction. Friday’s rounds 190 through 195 saw bidding stabilize just barely shy of the $4.2B mark. Of course, that is if you consider $5M to be “just barely shy”.
$4.2B is a lot of money. More than double the original estimates.
Of course, bidders are spending their cash based on what their business plans say is reasonable, but there is no one in Canada who can say that they honestly expected that the government would raise this kind of cash.
What will we do with that multi-billion dollar windfall?
At The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit, we laid out a broadband proposal to see the government reinvest in telecommunications as a critical infrastructure.
What do you think? What would you have the government do with the more than $2B extra dollars raised?