Get out your piggy banks; the FCC spectrum auction starts thursday

The big day is almost here! All the heavy tele-hitters will be making offers on the chunk of wireless spectrum being made available by the FCC. There are 5 blocks, A through E. A and B are regional and may be bought by carriers hoping to strengthen their coverage in certain areas. E is one-way, so it’s useless for cool stuff like email, mobile web, and so on. C and D are where the action are. Big slices, big enough to build a nation-wide network on. They have catches too – C carries Google’s suggestion that it be open to any device or service, and D will have to be shared with public safety agencies. In any case, if you have a spare five billion dollars lying around, feel free to throw down with the telecoms and Google for a piece of the airwaves.

Auction of key airwaves begins Thursday [Reuters]