The Federal Communications Commission announced today that the spectrum auction planned for mid-2015 will now take place in early 2016. In a blog post, Gary Epstein, chair of the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force, says that lawsuits from television broadcasters attempting to prvent the spectrum auction have delayed the proceedings. The airwaves that will eventually hit the auction block are low frequency (600MHz) and therefore attractive to wireless carriers that want to build next generation networks on. Lower frequency waves penetrate buildings and cover wide areas better than high-frequency bandwidth. The 600MHz block was previously reserved for television broadcast signals.