Wireless DBS, the consortium tied to Echostar, DirecTV, News Corp, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Echostar’s Charles Ergen, qualified to bid and paid one of the largest upfront payments out of the list of interested bidders, of $972.55 million. The group’s auction plans might involve WiMAX, and prove to be crucial to these companies future as triple play becomes common place. (The upfront payment is refundable if the company doesn’t win the specturm it desires, but could be an indicator of how much the companies are willing to spend.)

The cable consortium SpectrumCo, tied to cable companies Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable and Comcast CEO and Chairman Brian Roberts, among others, qualified to bid and put down another large upfront payment of $637.71 million. Other cable groups like the Washington Post’s Cable One qualified and paid an upfront payment of $3.5 million. The Dolan Family, tied to Charles Dolan, Cablevision’s Chairman, qualified and paid an upfront fee of $149.98 million.

Most of the largest U.S. phone companies qualified. T-Mobile paid an upfront fee of $583.52 million, Cingular put down $500 million, and a company tied to Verizon paid an upfront fee of $383.34 million.

The company tied to Paul Allen, Bend Cable Communications, that we previously profiled, qualified to bid, and paid an upfront fee of $176,000. At least four companies backed by spectrum speculator “Super Mario” Gabelli qualified to bid, paid a total of $3 million in upfront payments. Controversial wireless bidder Allen Salmasi and Nextwave Telecom, qualified to bid through a company called AWS Wireless, and that group put down $142.83 million.

The group called POP Wireless, backed by BPL company Current Communications, which is funded by Google and Earthlink, that we profiled earlier, was listed as “not qualified to bid.” We’ll follow up with more on the upcoming auction before the big day.

According to FCC filings a consortium backed by William Berkman, and the broadband over power lines company Current Communications Group that he co-founded and is Chairman, and including Current investors Goldman Sachs and TXU Utility Services, is looking to bid in the upcoming wireless spectrum in August. As you might remember, Current is also backed by companies interested in wireless–Google and Earthlink.

While Google’s and Earthlink’s individual investments are not disclosed Current has raised over a hundred million in capital to build its BPL network. There was a lot of speculation over Google joining the spectrum auction–this seems as close as the company was willing to get.

While Current refused our requests for the details on their wireless plans, wireless is already being used in conjunction with broadband over powerlines by companies like Motorola and Communication Technologies Inc (ComTek). BPL runs over electrical outlets and is touted for its ease-of-access, though has few deployments to date.

Wireless could help extend those deployments. ComTek’s VP for Broadband, Walt Adams, said in a few cases the company is already powering WiFi hotspots with BPL, and that the company is planning to grow its wireless offering later this year. So if Berkman and Current buy some wireless spectrum, the company’s slow-moving BPL plans could get a real boost.

For now how the consortium plans to use any wireless spectrum in tandem with their BPL plans remains unclear. The application is officially incomplete but the company has until 6PM today to update the filing.