Paul Allen, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder, will bid against Google for a spectrum license that could be used to roll-out a wireless broadband network across the United States.

Mr Allen and Google join 94 other bidders so far approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the regulator that is running an auction for a portion of the US airwaves expected to raise as much as $15 billion.

Other deep-pocketed bid backers include Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican telecom mogul whose personal fortune was put at $59 billion earlier this year by Fortune, making him the world’s richest man – just ahead of Microsoft’s other co-founder Bill Gates.

However, the most intense competition is likely to come from US mobile incumbents such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Britain’s Vodafone Group. If outbid both groups face being toppled from their dominant positions in the US mobile industry.

The radio spectrum being sold off by the FCC is situated around the 700MHz band, an asset described as the “Mayfair and Park Lane” of the airwaves.

Made available as television goes digital, it can travel long distances and penetrate walls easily. Crucially it has the potential to become, alongside cable and telephone lines, a wireless “third broadband pipe” – a mobile internet network that would boast speeds comparable to current conventional broadband services.

Mr Allen has applied to bid in the FCC auction, which is scheduled to begin on January 24, through his investment vehicle, Vulcan Spectrum.

A noted philanthropist and collector of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, he co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975 and is now the fifth-richest man in the United States, with a personal fortune estimated at $18 billion by Forbes.

He also heads an investment company called Vulcan Capital and is also a majority shareholder in Charter Communications, the US cable operator.

The auction process could hold implications for Britain, where Ofcom, the communications regulator, is preparing to auction off the so-called "digital dividend" - those parts of the UK spectrum that will be left vacant after television's digital switchover.

Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, recently said that Ofcom had been "following the US very carefully".

He added: "We have a lot of interest in innovation and talk to the FCC regularly."

It is widely thought that should Google win a spectrum licence it will extend its advertising business further into mobile handsets. Just how it would go about that, however, is open to debate. Mooted options include Google investing in its own network infrastructure. Alternatively, it could issue sub-licenses to other operators on its own terms or even use its own auctions expertise to run a spot-market in internet capacity.

Google has been testing an advanced wireless network at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, that could be used if it won the spectrum and decided to become a national mobile carrier, it said.

To read the full list of the 96 accepted applications, click here.

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