700 MHz auction analysis: Why Rogers didn’t overpay, why Videotron won but won’t go national and why the time may now be ripe for Verizon

OTTAWA – Let’s get this out of the way right now… Most of us were wrong. Many had assumed we would have a nice orderly, low-priced auction once there were no wild cards left in the bidding.Analysts and other observers (us, too) made the mistake in thinking that these ultra-competitive companies would somehow quietly and quickly divvy up spectrum which boasts such excellent distance and barrier-penetrating properties as yet unseen in wireless telephony in Canada, spending only perhaps half of what was spent in the last auction – the $4.2 billion for AWS spectrum in 2008.Not. Even. Close. Rogers alone...