Someone just paid $924 million for an invisible thing over New York.
Giphy
You can't touch it. You can't see it. You can't put it in a warehouse. And it isn't even really “owned.”
Yet Verizon paid $924.199 million for one AWS-3 spectrum license covering the New York–Long Island market in the FCC's 2026 auction. Across the entire auction, seven winners paid $3.57 billion for 200 licenses.
So what exactly did they buy?
A legal right to use a particular slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, in a particular geographic area, under particular technical rules.
Congratulations.
You just bought a chunk of something that technically isn't even a thing.