Q: I understand that in the recent FCC auction the government took in more than 13 billion dollars. I don’t get it. I know we talked about this last December, but I’m still confused. What, exactly, is spectrum, and can it really be sold?

A: You’re right about the auction and the amount of money. Spectrum is the sum of all the frequencies between about 100 megahertz and something well above 100 terahertz. And maybe it can’t be “sold,” but a particular government can authorize the sole use of it to a winning bidder.

Q: Back up, please. I know what 100 megahertz is. That means that something moves back and forth 100 million times a second. But what’s with the” tera”?

A: At the bottom of the scale is hertz, or cycles per second. Your wall socket produces electricity at 60 hertz; the electrons move back and forth 60 times per second. Then comes kilohertz. Kilo is thousand. Then comes mega. In each case we are moving up by a factor of 1,000. That is, 1 kilohertz is 1,000 hertz; 1 megahertz is 1,000 kilohertz. Next comes gigahertz, or 1,000 megahertz. Finally (at least as far as we are concerned) comes terahertz, or 1,000 gigahertz. So 1 terahertz is 1,000,000,000,000 cycles per second.

Q: So what’s with this auction stuff?

A: There are thousands of users of chunks of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example: AM radio, FM radio, TV, cellular, aircraft, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, taxicabs, radio amateurs, police, etc. The chunks are carefully defined so that there is minimal overlap or interference. Recently the industry has been clamoring for frequencies to carry Advanced Wireless Services.

Q: Hold on. What are Advanced Wireless Services?

A: We don’t rightly know. The FCC says these frequencies can be used “to provide a wide array of innovative wireless services and technologies, including voice, data, video, and other wireless broadband services ….”

Q: Just where did people go for this auction?

A: They didn’t go anywhere. It was an electronic auction. There were 104 bidders, and they were bidding for 1,087 licenses - that is, sub-chunks of the spectrum in a particular city or state. The auction began August 9, 2006, and finished September 18. There were 161 rounds of bidding.

Q: Sounds complicated.

A: It was.

Q: Could I have bid?

A: If you had enough up-front money, yes. And you would be required to pay whatever the winning bid was by some pre-defined date.

Q: How long has this been going on?

A: For about 13 years. Things didn’t start out too smoothly. Instead of an auction there was a lottery. Companies threw their names in a hat, and took pot luck. Unfortunately a number of the companies involved were simply interested in flipping the licenses; they collected huge sums by selling their good fortune to some company that needed spectrum – for instance, for cellular telephone service. The FCC caught on, and started auctioning off the various frequency bands.

Q: We started out by saying the total take on this auction was more than 13 billion dollars. Is that for real?

A: It sure is. T-Mobile was the highest spending bidder. It paid more than 4 billion dollars for some 120 licenses. Verizon paid more than 2 billion dollars. Cingular more than 1 billion. It adds up.

Q; How long will it take to recoup this money?

A: Don’t ask.