The FCC’s H-block auction continued Monday, with 174...

The FCC’s H-block auction continued Monday, with 174 licenses having provisionally winning bids (PWBs) after round 36 and PWBs totaling $1.08 billion. That amount is still well below Dish Network’s December commitment to bid $1.564 billion in the auction. The highest bid is for the license for New York City and surrounding areas at $217 million, which is below the minimum required bid of $238.6 million in the next bidding round. “The H-Block auction has seen more selective, but slowing, activity over the last several rounds,” said New Street Research in a Monday research report. “Aggregate auction prices are now at $0.33/MHz-POP, 35 percent below DISH’s reserve bid of $0.50/MHz-POP; however, select urban markets are showing accelerating price increases and bids that are above prices paid in Auction 66” the AWS-1 auction. New Street said all signs are still that Dish will buy spectrum covering the entire U.S. when the auction concludes. “In recent rounds, certain urban markets, such as Las Vegas and Minneapolis, have seen 4-5x bids per round as the rest of the licenses,” the firm said. “It is possible that the competition is attempting to drive up prices in major markets, before switching bids to the markets they really want in later rounds; however, bid increases are slowing on an aggregate basis, and are still well below the reserve bid. As such, it appears that DISH’s bid is best positioned to win a national footprint with a bid that is likely at or close to the reserve bid.”