There isn't any more noise in the spectrum they bid on than any other unused portion. They purchased the spectrum to be used for satellite communications. The

There isn't any more noise in the spectrum they bid on than any other unused portion. They purchased the spectrum to be used for satellite communications. There was an FCC loophole that allowed them to supplement satellite communications with terrestrial signals in certain cases. They decided to move ahead with a FULL terrestrial system. They decided to bet large - and lost. Any EE could have shown the blasting a signal literally billions of times stronger in an adjacent band would completely kill functionality of devices that rightfully would never ever have expected to need to design for it.