UK wireless auction starts

Unica Communications has become the first casualty in the long-awaited UK broadband fixed wireless access (BFWA) 28GHz auction.

No sooner had the first round of bidding begun than Unica decided that a license would cost more than it was worth and withdrew from the auction. Noel Dunn, managing director at Unica, said: "We looked at it long and hard and decided that it was not much different than fibre or ADSL. Therefore, it didn't warrant spending so much money on a license". Dunn said it the technology was not best-suited for Unica and added he would rather be a reseller than a provider. Within the hour-long first round of bidding, which got underway at 10am this morning, Faultbasic had already bid £10m for licenses in Greater London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire and the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Salop and Herefordshire. Hot on their heels with bids totalling £8m was Energis Local Access Ltd. Norweb Telecom have bids totalling £5m, with all three bidding for the Greater London licenses they all need to top Winstar Communications, who came in with a late bid for £4.01m. Formus Communications is the sole bidder, at this moment in time, for the Northern Ireland license with a bid of £100,000. The remaining companies, Broadnet UK, Chorus Communications, FirstMark Communications (UK) and Formus Communications have all yet to place a bid.