Tuesday, September 19, 2006

What About the West?

AWS is now over. The latest spectrum auction of wireless frequencies pulled $14 billion from wireless companies (for essentially the air), though the results were somewhat surprising. T-Mobile came out on top, buying about 50% more than any other carrier - even though their cellular footprint is much smaller (currently No. 4).

What surprised me most, however, was the geographic distribution of the wireless spectrum. According to GigaOm:

  1. Verizon Wireless was very active in Auction 66, securing 13 licenses in the Northeast, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley and Louisiana.
  2. T-Mobile was aggressive in acquiring spectrum licenses in the North East of US.
My question: where's the love for the West coast? I would think companies like these would love to roll out the latest and greatest to us early adopters first! Where else do execs tote their newest Treos and Blackberry's with pride? It seems to me that this is where ideas are made - so building your customer base here first should be the way to go.

Or maybe I'm just upset because I won't automatically get better service.

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