Stage 4 of the FCC’s reverse auction ended Friday afternoon with $10,054,676,822 as the new payout price that the government will need to clear 84 MHz of TV spectrum to resell to wireless operators.

     The question now is whether wireless carriers will agree to that in stage 4 of the forward auction process, expected to kick off on Jan. 18.

     The $10 billion total is far below the $86 billion that was being asked when the auction began back in June. The wireless bidders didn’t come anywhere near that so the target was lowered to $54.6 billion in stage 2, then to $40 billion in stage 3.

-TVNewsCheck, January 13, 2017 4:07 PM EST