Can you briefly introduce yourself and your company ?
Sure. My name is Michael DeBoer, a Marketing Manager for a company called Spectrum Bridge. What we’ve done is develop an online marketplace which brings together buyers and sellers of licensed spectrum and generally leverages the advantages of the secondary spectrum market.
Can you tell us how the spectrum market is organized between the primary and secondary Market ?
The markets could be compared to the real estate industry. In order to make a purchase on the primary market, you’d have to buy a new home from a builder or developer. If you then sold the house a few years down the road, you’d be selling it on the secondary market, and the person buying your house would be buying on the secondary market. In the spectrum business, the primary market is the one we are most familiar hearing about; 700 MHz, AWS-3, cellular and PCS auctions: i.e. getting spectrum directly from the FCC [ Federal Communications Commission ].
The secondary market is where, to me, the more exciting moving and shaking takes place. It was solidified in 2003 when the FCC adopted new regulations which allow spectrum to be bought, sold or leased to third-parties. It was called the Secondary Market Initiative. On top of opening up a new market for reselling spectrum assets, the new rules also opened up the possibility for a company like ours to exist.
A secondary market transaction would be defined as one in which the license transferred or leased was not acquired directly from the FCC, rather it was acquired from a current holder. That being said, the secondary market is what ensures businesses can still get spectrum they need, even without forking over billions of dollars to win spectrum in a major FCC auction.
And how Spectrum Bridge is adding value into it ?
What we’ve created is a marketplace called SpecEx as a resource where people can find out what frequencies are available on the secondary market; basically leveraging the FCC rules to establish a viable and beneficial market for everyone. We make it easy to market your excess spectrum or find spectrum for sale with a few clicks of your mouse. It’s a lot like how the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) works for houses.
Let’s say you’re a utility company or government agency who would like to buy some … Read the rest
