Computech Influencing “The Future of Mobile”

On Wednesday, Bisnow hosted the Future of Mobile event, featuring FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Computech President Larry Fitzpatrick (pictured, left). The event discussed the ever growing importance of bandwidth driven by mobile devices.  Chairman Genachowski discussed, among other things, the challenge of “unleashing spectrum” to mobile devices and its importance to the nation’s communications systems. After the chairman’s speech, Larry Fitzpatrick and various other mobile industry executives participated in a Q & A session to discuss what the future of mobile broadband held.

One of the main points the panelists discussed was the importance of fixing existing spectrum issues. Larry spoke about Computech’s history with the FCC and our years of conducting all of their spectrum auctions and also mentioned Computech’s recent launch of the broadbandmap.gov website, created for the FCC and NTIA to provide information on what broadband services are available across the United States. Gathering this data is one of the first steps to overcoming a big obstacle in this country, as Larry stated yesterday, because the biggest remaining barrier to mobile technology is high-speed data access from anywhere.

The Future of Mobile was just one of many events that Computech plans to support this year. The 6th annual European Spectrum Conference takes place in Brussels on the week of June 14.  Computech will be a gold sponsor of the conference, which still is open for registration. Computech has many exciting opportunities ahead so stay tuned for announcements about our future endeavors.


Posted on Friday, May 13th, 2011 at 11:45 am and is filed under Broadband Map, FCC, spectrum management.

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By: Darren Vandergriff

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Middle Eastern Spectrum Conference Registration Open

On March 29 and 30, the Second Middle East Spectrum Conference will take place at the Palace Hotel, Old Town, Dubai. The conference itself will cover the key emerging issues in Spectrum Management, while highlighting its role in the Middle East.
Some of the specific topics discussed at the conference:

• Finding the spectrum for 4G networks
• Tackling the mobile data crunch
• The challenge of GSM reframing
• Reaping the digital dividend
• New approaches to spectrum enforcement
• Public sector spectrum in the 21st Century
• Cognitive radio: how close is the future?

In the coming weeks we’ll provide more information regarding the event and Kris Shields’ role in the conference – which includes a hands-on guide to auctioning spectrum, two days before the conference begins; in the meantime, you can learn more the training courses here and Computech’s role here.

Make sure that you register for the conference right here.


Posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Online Auctions, spectrum management.

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By: Darren Vandergriff

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Computech wins the trust of Sweden’s telecoms regulator

The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) has awarded Computech a place on its framework agreement to provide consulting services to support their spectrum auctions.  The competition to provide either simultaneous multi-round (SMR) or Clock auctions drew global interest; we’re pleased to announce Computech is the sole North American firm qualified by PTS to support either style of spectrum auction.


Posted on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 2:30 pm and is filed under News, Online Auctions, spectrum management.

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By: Computech

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Behind the Scenes with CAP & COFETEL, take 2

In my last entry, I touched on the initial phase in our auction development lifecycle with COFETEL – requirements.  Today, I’m sharing our auction team’s training experiences with the Mexican regulator.

Three months after we visited COFETEL to present the initial wireframes, COFETEL stakeholders & subject matter experts (SME’s) traveled to our headquarters in Bethesda, MD to participate in “Integrated System Testing” sessions with our auctions team.  Over the course of a week, we ran several simulated auction scenarios from start to close.  This testing trip served multiple purposes:

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1. We established a common understanding of all system requirements.

2. Hands-on, screen-by-screen walk-throughs of the Administration and Bidding Systems.

3. SME’s from both teams tested all system functionality on a rotating schedule to ensure complete coverage and understanding of requirements.

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A little more than a month later, our team flew back to Mexico City to install and conduct Acceptance Testing for phase 1 of the project.  During our  first week there, we installed software on COFETEL’s servers, tested CAP internally, and trained COFETEL staff on how to administer an auctions.  This last part was pretty interesting, as it included creating an auction instance, defining auction-specific settings, and managing mid-auction parameters to control auction pace — all using the Administration System we built into CAP.

During week two, we borrowed nearly 20 COFETEL’ers to bid as 8 different bidders over the course of two Mock Auctions.  Each mock auction involved two concurrent Auctions composed of unique license sets, bidding and processing parameters, spectrum caps by region, and alternating round schedules.  This setup was in practice for COFETEL’s plan to run their two recent Auctions, 20 and 21, in parallel.

For our last trip prior to the live auctions, COFETEL scheduled a busy and publicity-rich week.  The Computech team supported Cofetel by creating the presentation and system demonstration for COFETEL to present at three key events that week:

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1. COFETEL’s press conference regarding auction design and rules;

2. The bidding seminar for the spectrum industry and auction participants, which covered the upcoming auction design, specific rules, and nuances of the system interfaces; and

3. Their internal presentation to the Commissioners and Chairman of COFETEL.

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Following the Bidder Seminar, we led mock auctions for the participants to familiarize themselves with CAP’s Spanish release. We administered these auctions using real license (“concurso”) data, but participants took on personas identified by colors such as “Rosa” and “Azul”.  Cofetel and Computech jointly tackled bidder’s questions on such things as activity calculations and results reporting.

And so began our final 2 weeks in Mexico City leading up to COFETEL’s Licitaciones 20 & 21.  In preparation for the big day, we ran internal mock auctions to verify the final software release and the production environment.  While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S. administers auctions using remote bidding, Mexico operates using on-site bidding which occurred on COFETEL premises.  In this manner, on the morning of May 25, 2010, Auctions 20 & 21 kicked off with representatives from Mexico’s major telecommunication companies on-site.  The feeling was somewhat bittersweet, yet full of excitement and anticipation for what Round 1 would have in store!

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Sarah Miller is a member of  Computech’s Auction Practice.  She specializes in auction system design and implementation and is the lead Business Analyst for the Computech Auction Platform (CAP).


Posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 1:38 pm and is filed under News, Online Auctions, spectrum management.

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By: admin

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Behind the Scenes with CAP & COFETEL, take 1

With Mexico’s Auctions 20+21 closed and the winners revealed, I thought it would be interesting to share some behind the scenes details of delivering Mexico’s auction solution.  Between the summer of 2009 and spring of 2010, the Computech and COFETEL international partnership relied on taking turns traveling between Washington D.C. and la ciudad de Mexico.  Over the next series of entries, I’ll be walking you through various aspects of supporting the auction lifecycle.  On tap today – spectrum caps.

In June (’09), COFETEL’s auctions stakeholders & subject matter experts spent a week in our Bethesda offices discussing the intricacies that Auctions 20+21 had in store.  Together, we compared and contrasted U.S. & Mexico spectrum policies to hash out system requirements.  Soon thereafter, our team crossed the border with an initial set of system requirements and wireframes to present to our COFETEL partners.  Much of this trip revolved around spectrum caps – logic, levels, and logistics.

One key element of incorporating spectrum caps into CAP (our auction platform), related to the concurrent nature of Auctions 20 + 21 (i.e. the auctions were run in a parallel fashion by alternating rounds).  Therefore, in order to handle spectrum caps that comprised both auctions, we implemented spectrum caps at an auction-level as well as a region-level. In this way, the system tracked a company’s MHz holdings within a distinct auction (i.e. bidding in 20 or 21), as well as across both auctions (i.e. bidding in 20 and 21).

Based on spectrum cap levels set by Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission (COFECO), CAP effectively restricted bidding by notifying bidders in real-time in the case of ineligible bids due to these caps.  Additionally, CAP provided a Spectrum Cap Report, which disclosed bidder-specific spectrum information by geographic region (1-9 for Mexico).  End result?  The Nextel-Televisa consortium entered the nationwide market with a winning bid on a 30 MHz block of spectrum, and spectrum caps effectively introduced (or limited, depending on your perspective) competition into the nationwide market for Mexico.  I know cases can be made for the +’s & -‘s of each side, but I’ll save that debate for another day.

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Sarah Miller is a member of  Computech’s Auction Practice.  She specializes in auction system design and implementation and is the lead Business Analyst for the Computech Auction Platform (CAP).


Posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 6:05 pm and is filed under News, Online Auctions, spectrum management.

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By: admin

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