Several companies and trade groups praised the FCC for its vote.

The vote is "a big step in the right direction," Mary Brown, director of government affairs for Cisco Systems, said in a statement. "The FCC invented the spectrum auction and perfected it. We have every confidence that the commission will do the same for incentive auctions."

The auction, along with an FCC proposal approved Friday to look at spectrum holding limit policy, will help carries meet "soaring consumer demand for mobile Internet services," Joan Marsh, AT&T's vice president for federal regulatory affairs, .

The IDG News Service