Best of all, it’s reeeeeally complicated! My favorite! Okay, so I’m going to make this simpler than it is because then you can understand it and also I can understand it.  

The reason you should care is because America’s appetite for broadcast communications, especially wireless data, is dang near insatiable. We’re hungry! But! There’s a finite amount of spectrum available.

So! Basically, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wanted to make more broadcast spectrum available for companies to buy and use so more Americans can be constantly communicating. Yesterday, congress said okay. It’s a ways off from happening but once it does, it will happen in two stages: first, a reverse auction where the government buys back a bunch of spectrum from organizations who have those licenses but aren’t using all of the spectrum. Then, a forward auction where the highest bidder can grab that spectrum and use it.
From here, the FCC needs to figure out who’s willing to sell and how to set up the blocks for sale so that they aren’t just slivers here and there but actual usable contiguous sets.