FCC chairman Kevin Martin told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Tuesday that the vote "provides an important opportunity for consumers to be able to go to a new wireless provider and be able to take whatever wireless device or handset they want."
"This kind of spectrum doesn't become available very often so it's going to be very important," Martin added. "This is probably the last auction for that kind of spectrum for quite awhile."
The open-access provision was a key initiative for Google, trying to make sure the incumbent wireless companies could not act as a kind of "digital gatekeeper" for Google's software on mobile devices.
Google made the argument that the new spectrum should be open to all software vendors and hardware makers, allowing software and hardware to work wirelessly no matter the network.