The second week of the AWS auction ended on Friday, with the original 168 bidders being whittled down to 137 and with money so far pledged for licenses reaching $11.37 billion. As of Friday, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA have outspent all of the other remaining bidders combined.
 
T-Mobile License LLC held the leading bid of more than $3.8 billion on 125 licenses. Verizon Wireless and Vodafone Group were second with $2.8 billion for four licenses. SpectrumCo, a consortium of Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint Nextel, Cox Communications, and Bright House Networks, was third with about $1.72 billion in winning bids on 100 licenses. Cingular has the winning bids on 42 licenses valued at about $711.5 million.

Among telecoms, T-Mobile had every reason to be aggressive, as it badly trails Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless in spectrum allocations. Notable among media companies: Satellite consortium Wireless DBS had bowed out, but SpectrumCo is still in the race--one of few remaining media players still moving aggressively.

The auction started on August 9, and is well on its way toward raising the expected $15 billion for the government.

For more on the AWS auction:
-see Katie Fehrencbacher's GigaOm report
-and this AP report