The FCC and the economists advising them and potential bidders quickly realized that selling spectrum licenses one at a time would be bad market design, as it would make it too risky for bidders to assemble the packages they needed. That is, if licenses were auctioned one at a time, bidders would have to bid very cautiously for fear of being left with only part of the package they wanted, which would be less valuable to them than what they had paid. To put it another way, it wouldn’t be safe for bidders to fearlessly bid for each license the amount it would be worth to them as part of the
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