FCC incentive auction

USA Today covers the earliest stage of the FCC's incentive auction: FCC's complex incentive auction could net more than $30 billion

"The most sophisticated and complex spectrum auction ever conducted by the Federal Communications Commission is officially underway.

"When the entire process comes to an end more than three years from now, big wireless carriers that provide most of our smartphone access should have more bandwidth to delivery services to mobile-hungry consumers.

"TV broadcasters by Tuesday night must have made official their intentions to accept the FCC's opening price for the rights to the spectrum they currently use for digital TV broadcasts. Once the agency knows how much spectrum can be made available in this "reverse auction," then, in a few months, the FCC will open up the bidding in the "forward auction" in which companies such as AT&T and Verizon can bid on the reallocated spectrum in each of 400-plus localities."