To all, thanks all for the supportive comments.
I was afraid I'd lose support here if I continued any longer.
And I promise, I won't keep this up.
"So you now feel, based on the facts as you now understand them, that the apparent market non-competitiveness was a bona fide, if seemingly "smelly", coincidence? Or is there still some factual inconsistency that you still see?"
So what, you're the lawyer now :-)
No, I still don't think it can explain the non-competitiveness.
But as has been pointed out, what with the bidding credits, activity requirements, bidding waivers, etc, it is very difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened and why.
A couple simple points again, if I may;
WNP had the high bids (and hence used their bidding credits) after round one for LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, and about 5 others, that in the end, they did not win. They COULD have continued bidding on these markets without needing anymore bidding credits. Why they switched to not bidding, or bidding on other markets is anyones guess.
Looking at round 2 (and I just checked a few of the largest markets), WNP got overbid in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and San Diego (and I assume a few others), that, for whatever reason, they never went back and rebid on. Just these 4 markets freed up 23.5M bidding credits entering round 3 (since they couldn't hardly bid in round two because all their bidding credits were used up) to either rebid here, elsewhere, or as eventually happened with 20M, lose.
Note also, however weird it may be :-), that it was Nextband that overbid them in each of these 4 markets. There were very few other major markets that WNP bid on in the first round that they didn't eventually win.
Also note that most major markets that WNP bid on in the first round only to get overbid, they eventually bid high enough to win, ie New York, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Dallas, Wash DC, even though some they had to bid quite high on.
So, just more of that "looks funny" stuff. But I really don't see where they were constrained by the bidding credits. With the caveat though as I said above, without reconstructing the auction, it's tough to imagine what kinds of predicaments they could have found themselves in. There really is alot of weird strategy that has to go into your bidding logic. And although I'm nowhere near qualified to comment on their financial condition, it doesn't make sense to me that they were finance constrained (or why in the world did they bid so high on Chicago, committing such a high percent of their total budget there???).
See, there you go, keeping me open now to the continuing debate I was trying to avoid.
I guess I should have prefaced this post with <with apologies to DreamWeaver> also. "(is he even long anymore?" I don't think so, seems he sold out back 15 points or so ago. And he asks me how to make money! Silly question :-) BUY WINSTAR (Or course he's making a killing in AirTouch!) Sorry DG, just playing with you.
Steve
PS I'm realizing that people here not as familiar with the auction as I am probably have no idea what the points are I'm trying to make here.
PPS Although I hardly ever understand what you, Bernard and Wireless Wonk are talking about. |
