New Product Release: Real-time analytics tool for the FCC 700 MHz Auction 73

Sausalito, California - January 22, 2008 - Optimal Markets, Inc. announced today the launch of the BidXplorer, a real-time auction analytics tool for ThursdayÕs FCC 700MHz Auction 73. The Optimal Markets BidXplorer is the only tool which automatically downloads the FCC data and creates real-time, interactive color maps showing the bidding activity by license, region and band. More importantly, the BidXplorer calculates various metrics previously only available in the war-rooms of the large bidders.

Over 200 bidders will compete in the auction for the right to broadcast on the 700 MHz frequencies freed up when TV goes all digital in 2009. Signals travel exponentially further at 700MHz, thus requiring far less infrastructure, and making these frequencies more valuable, than the 1.7 and 2.1 GHz frequencies auctioned last year for $13 billion. There has been speculation in the media regarding the interest of internet heavyweight Google in this auction.

The rules of Auction 73 are new, combining 'package bidding', where bidders bid on groups of licenses, and 'blind bidding', in which only partial information is being released at the end of each round. In previous auctions all of the bidding information was made available during the auction, however in Auction 73 only a 50,000 line data file, and a few spreadsheets will be released at the end of each round over a projected 4-6 week timeframe (150-200 rounds), hence the need for new analytics tools.

Optimal Markets assembled a stellar team to design and build this software: Karen Wrege, of Wrege Associates, who managed the creation of the first FCC auctions in 1994, and Brett Tarnutzer of BTconsultancy who was formerly Chief of Auction Operations at the FCC. Optimal Markets provides auction software platforms for electricity, petrochemical, and natural gas markets.

"We are pleased to make available, for the first time ever, the tools previously only available in the war-rooms of the largest bidders", said David Moshal, CEO of Optimal Markets, "now everyone can observe and analyze, in real-time, the largest spectrum auction in a generation".

A free trial version of the software is available at: http://www.optimalmarkets.com/fcc.html

Contact:
David Moshal
Optimal Markets, Inc.
415.299.7707
davidm@optimalmarkets.com
www.optimalmarkets.com