Canada's Radio Spectrum Raises US$4.8 Billion - with Rogers Wireless Dominant

The winners of Canada s 700Mhz radio spectrum auction have been announced and they collectively paid CD5 27 billion USD4 8 billion to the government

The biggest spender by far was Rogers, which paid $3.29 billion for 22 blocks of paid spectrum.

Rogers' new 700MHz spectrum covers 99.7% of the Canadian population. Its two blocks of contiguous, paired spectrum are located in the key rural and urban locations across Canada.

Behind them was Telus, who paid $1.14 billion for 16 paired and 14 unpaired blocks, then Bell who paid $565.7 million for 17 paired and 14 unpaired blocks.

Bell said that it will fund its spectrum licensing payments to the federal government from available sources of cash.

The rest of the bids were considerably smaller, with Videotron paying $233 million, Bragg $20.3 million, MTS $8.7 million, Sasktel $7.6 million and Feenix picking up one solitary block of spectrum for $284,000.

There were in the end 15 bidders in the auction, which lasted 108 rounds.