I think they will spend around 3-5B max, given that they just sold 2B debt.

It is also highly unlikely that T-Mobile would be bidding $2B+ on a single license, when it went in with a warchest of little more than $3B.

So I agree there are other possibilities and we won’t know it is definitely DISH until the announcement at the end. But I also believe that significant bidding by DISH is by far the most plausible explanation of what we’ve seen. Incidentally, I expect the FCC to clarify net winning bids very quickly if major DE discounts are involved, to pre-empt erroneous reporting of the amount raised in the auction.

One strategy for smaller players in a SMRA auction like this is to park bids in early rounds in the largest licences because they can preserve eligibility without any real risk of winning the licences, because the large incumbents (Verizon/AT&T) will not give up the licences. As a result, any of the bidders with sufficient eligibility to bid on the NYC J-block licence could have been the holder in Round 12, even if they had no intention to ever win the licence or even pay the price at that point. This can easily explain the high number of bids in early rounds. Also, it is possible that the $1.2B in DE bids in Round 12 was split between multiple bidders, rather than a single aggressive player.

Saying that, there also isn’t any evidence that your theory is wrong. It is a plausible case (although, I don’t see why it makes any sense for Ergen to support two different DE bidders). He may have given them the support to go after the large J-block licences (and some others), while DISH directly targets the unpaired spectrum.

On the other hand, I can’t see any evidence that this isn’t a fight between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. If Verizon and AT&T are each chasing 30 MHz, they would exaggerate bidding between themselves and could drive T-Mobile to fight back. I understand the reasoning why it might not make sense to T-Mobile to keep engaged at this point, but that logic could apply to anyone at these prices.

We don’t know anything about the bidding later on. But I’ve not seen any credible suggestions of alternate bidders in the NY J block apart from DISH, AT&T and Verizon. You would expect three bidders (holder+ 2 bidders) if you see 2 new bids in a round.

The PWB holder can overbid itself, but this would be utterly out of character behavior for AT&T and Verizon to pre-emptively push up their own winning bid. They benefit from a longer auction, where other smaller players can’t maintain eligibility, so they want to draw things out. So I think only DISH would be overbidding itself and then 2 new bids indicates either DISH plus one of AT&T and Verizon or all three of them are active.

Based on your blog posts, you seem to dismiss other potential bidders who would have the resources (Docomo, KKR, Carlos Slim) for an unexplained reason. There is a single data point (Round 12) that indicates one (or more) DE bidders held PWBs worth at least $1.2B at that moment. (No way to tell if they were all trumped the following round and may or may not have bid further.)

The shift to the A1 block in Round 17 is likely a sign of DISH (as expected) parking bids in the paired spectrum before moving to the licences he really wants (to combine with AWS-4 downlink spectrum).

However, I can’t see, or have missedin your posts, what other evidence there is that this additional bidding is coming from DISH-related entities. At this point, there are only a handful of licences with 2 new bids per round (implying 3 bidders, assuming the PWB does not bid). Given that Verizon and AT&T could be two of those for the H/I/J blocks, is there anything specific to indicate DISH is driving the handful of licences receiving an additional bid?

Technical question: is the PWB from the previous round permitted to bid in the current round? i.e., could the apparent number of bids be inflated by the perception that new bids do not include the previous PWB?

On a TMO bid, why would DT want AWS-3 (and by extension AWS-4) spectrum that Ergen is valuing at a price they were not prepared to pay in the auction? They would presumably take cash, but Ergen won’t have enough, unless he gets backing from Slim for example. However, I doubt DT value DISH stock anywhere close to where Ergen (and most analysts who put a very high price on spectrum) value it. They know about what happens when spectrum is overvalued from their European experience.

On the other bidders, do you mean DoCoMo (SKT are not a listed bidder)? Neither DoCoMo nor America Movil sought DE status, so they can’t be responsible for the aggressive DE bidding we saw in Round 12 (and probably later on).