Fewer than 200 licenses are still seeing competition
The Federal Communications Commission’s auction of 2.5 GHz overlay licenses continues to wend toward its end, with fewer than 200 licenses out of about 8,000 that were still under contention as of Round 52.
Comparatively, about 300 licenses were still seeing competition last week.
The auction’s bid total was about $391.16 million as of the close of Round 51; Round 52 bumped that total up to $394.1 million. Four auction rounds are being held each day.
This auction wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster on the order of the C-Band auction, given that many of the spectrum licenses on offer are encumbered, particularly in urban areas that typically drive big bids by the national carriers. The greatest utility for the current 2.5 GHz licenses is expected to be in rural areas—indeed, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel talked up the auction specifically as one that would help to make inroads on the digital divide by providing an opportunity to “fill in some of the critical 5G gaps in rural America.” In addition, T-Mobile US has a huge head start on holdings in this band and deployment of 5G using 2.5 GHz spectrum acquired via its purchase of Sprint; plus, this auction comes last in a series of midband auctions (CBRS Priority Access Licenses, C-Band and 3.45-3.55 GHz) that have already drawn billions of dollars of carrier investment, particularly the C-Band auction.
There is a field of 82 qualified bidders, including the three national wireless network operators, US Cellular and Dish Wireless, bidding under the name Carbonate Wireless. There are also a significant number of small and medium-sized telecom network operators set to participate in the auction, including Carolina West Wireless, Cellular South Wireless, Copper Valley Wireless, Granite Wireless, Nex-Tech Wireless, NSight, Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Redzone Wireless and Union Telephone Company.
Those small bidders are most common in the middle of the country, where activity has been consistently elevated. But those buyers not going to drive big bid totals for the auction in the way that the C-Band, driven by huge spending by Verizon and AT&T, saw a total of more than $81 billion in bids that smashed previous auction records. (For more analysis of how the auction is going, read this story.)
There are three channels available, according to the FCC band plan: Channel 1, which is 49.5 megahertz of spectrum; Channel 2 is adjacent to Channel 1 and consists of 50.5 megahertz of spectrum. There is also a smaller channel, Channel 3, which consists of 17.5 megahertz and is not adjacent to either of the other two channels. Channels 1 and 2 seem to be receiving more interest than Channel 3, with prices reflected accordingly — according to auction tracking by Sasha Javid, COO of Bitpath and former chief data officer and legal advisor on the Federal Communications Commission’s Incentive Auction Task Force, as of Round 52 around $58 million in bids has gone to C3 licenses, around $145.7 million to C1 licenses and $190 million to C2 licenses.
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