At the end of the day on Thursday, bidding for AWS spectrum cracked through $3.9B and it seems to keep creeping up almost $5M per round. At that pace, we will get close to, but not quite at the $4B level before the week is through. I have already written about my thoughts on how the government might reinvest its windfall in enhancing accessibility to broadband by lower income Canadians. I noticed coverage in Tech Media Reports as well.
At the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday, Ken Engelhart did some quick arithmetic to show that the amounts are in line with valuations in recent auctions in other countries – it’s just that his comparables were for different frequency bands.
Still, we can be confident that the business plans still justify the levels. The question of where will all the capital come from remains. How many global players have stayed away because of foreign ownership restrictions?
While there are certainly legal constructs that can allow companies to satisfy a license review, how many companies have stayed clear of such games because they tend to believe that if they are putting up most of the bucks, they should get to control the board?
Would a loosening of foreign ownership restrictions result in even more competitive service providers?