The license auction for the 700 MHz spectrum in the US ended earlier this week, and as widely expected, Verizon and AT&T won the most licenses. Google didn’t win any, but says it’s cool, and that American consumers are the winners here. It’s a little early to say that, methinks, but we can hope. The initial upshot of the auction is that AT&T and Verizon have consolidated their strong positions in wireless spectrum, leaving them well-placed to continue at the top of the US market.

It looks like, as I predicted back in November that Google bid up the price of the nationwide C block — the license with the limited open-access rules — up to the $4.6 billion reserve price, triggering the rules, then dropped out. Verizon eventually won the C block license, paying about $4.75 billion for it.

As far as my prediction that the auction would toss up an “interesting” winner. Echostar, which operates the Dish Network satellite TV service, won an unpaired block of spectrum covering much of the country for $711.8 million, leading to speculation that it will build a mobile TV service. Cable TV company Cox also grabbed a number of licenses.

But Qualcomm seems like the dark horse here. It grabbed 12 MHz of spectrum in a number of big markets, along with some unpaired E-block licenses. It also bid on the D-block, which was the spectrum intended for a public-safety network. It was the only bidder and didn’t did the reserve price, so the FCC is determining how to proceed (another auction seems likely). The obvious thinking on Qualcomm is that it wanted more spectrum for its MediaFLO mobile TV service, but Dean Bubley wonders if it has something more potentially disruptive — like building a network with its UMB technology — in mind.

My quick take on all of this is that the 700 MHz auction in and of itself probably won’t end up being as game-changing as many people seemed to think a few months ago. However, the FCC’s push for open-access rules — even if they didn’t go as far as Google and others wanted — did play a role in pushing Verizon, AT&T and others down their current “open” path, and that may be the auction’s biggest and most lasting effect.