Those fancy wireless signals that give you sweet, sweet Facebook access on your mobile dont grow on trees, you know. They travel along wireless frequencies that are collected by the government and sold off to the highest bidder. And the next big wireless spectrum auction is getting ready to happen next year.
The auction includes some of the spectrum freed up by switching off analog TV, and is destined to happen late in 2012, provided the world doesn’t implode by then. It’s being sold to address the growing need for wireless data.
When the US sold off its 700MHz spectrum a few years back, it was sold for a massive $4,741,807,000 to Verizon, who have since used it to roll out LTE services. It will be interesting to see how much the local auction goes for, and who will walk away with that tasty radio wave victory pie.