Sep 1, 2006 1:49 PM, By Donny Jackson

High bids in the FCC’s advanced wireless services (AWS) auction have topped $13.5 billion as the proceeding appears to be nearing its conclusion.

Through 73 rounds, the U.S. Treasury stands to realize $13.574 billion in new revenue as of 1:30 p.m. EST, and the per-round increases in high bids have dropped noticeably during the past week, which is typical toward the end of an auction.

“We were all saying that the auction would raise between $10 billion and $15 billion, and that’s roughly where we’ll end up,” Ovum wireless analyst Roger Entner said. “That’s kind of surprising because spectrum auction [bids] are traditionally higher than what every analyst predicts.”

As expected, T-Mobile is the largest bidder in the auction, submitting the leading bids on 116 licenses currently worth $4.159 billion. An entity associated with Verizon Wireless is the second-highest bidder, proposing to spend $2.798 billion on just four licenses. SpectrumCo, a consortium of cable companies, is the third-largest bidder thus far, bidding $2.341 billion on 137 licenses.

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