Article from InformationWeek which talks about the 700 MHz spectrum auction. (Verizon, AT&T Big Winners In 700 MHz Auction) I'd been hearing projections of between $15-$20 Billion; so this tracks with expectations.
The point I think nobody has yet addressed is "what will happen to all the money that didn't win the auctions?" Presume that in total the amount of money which smaller players had available to bid was equal to the amount that was bid by the winners. This is a conservative estimate; in fact I suspect the number is larger. So that means that as of yesterday there's $20 Billion dollars sitting around which must now be re-purposed.
Let's look at this in perspective... The worldwide semiconductor market is approximately $200 Billion dollars. The entire worldwide electronics industry is approximately $1 Trillion dollars. Presuming that all of the unspent bidding dollars are put back into technology; this means that the worldwide electronics industry as a whole grew yesterday by 2%. If my suspicions are well-founded, it could in fact be greater than 2%.
So...where's the money going to be spent? What's if anything is the net effect on the technology markets?
