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AWS Spectrum Auction Ends

Sep 19, 2006, 12:47 AM by (staff)

After 161 rounds of bidding over 28 days, the FCC has closed this summer's auction of radio spectrum for 3G services. The auction - also known as Auction 66 - raised $13.7 billion dollars for the government. T-Mobile spent $4.2 billion for licenses covering nearly the whole country. Leap (who offers flat-rate service under the Cricket brand) and an affiliated bidder won licenses covering 176 million people. MetroPCS won licenses covering more than 144 million people. Sprint Nextel's joint venture with several cable companies came away with spectrum covering 267 million potential customers, costing $2.4 billion. Verizon Wireless spent $2.8 billion for 20 MHz of spectrum covering the U.S. east of the Mississippi River, plus additional licenses in Louisiana, Hawaii and Arkansas. Cingular won regional licenses in the West and Central United States, plus spectrum in markets such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Boston, Dallas - Ft. Worth and Atlanta. Dobson bid $65.9 million on 85 licenses. A company backed by U.S. Cellular, won spectrum in markets such as Tulsa, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and a regional Mississippi Valley license.

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FCC Raises Over $22 Billion in Latest Mid-Band 5G Auction

Jan 7, 2022
The FCC's Auction 110 has concluded, with up to 33 bidders paying a total of $22.5 billion for 4,041 licenses out of 4,060 offered. All of the top three national wireless carriers participated in the auction.

AT&T, Dish Big Winners in FCC's Latest Mid-Band Auction

Jan 14, 2022
The US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) just announced the winners of its auction 110, for prime new mid-band radio spectrum ideal for 5G. AT&T and Dish spent the most, each splurging for enough licenses to cover the entire continental US.

First Phones With Dish's Band 70 Approved by FCC

Mar 3, 2022
The FCC this week approved two new Motorola phones that support 5G NR in band 70, the unique band definition created specifically to combine the unique collection of frequency bands that Dish Network has won in FCC auctions over the past decade. These are the first phones approved by the FCC that support band 70.

Comments

This forum is closed.

This forum is closed.

Protege

Sep 19, 2006, 8:43 AM

How well did T-Mobile do?

Did they do as good as expected or were they expected to do better? It sounds like they did well.

longhorntodd

They spent allot of money but the real question is did they get good bang for their buck? My belief is they over spent in many areas. But all in all they did well I think! Can they continue to offer their data products at such a low cost with this ki...
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nextel18

I actually agree. I think they did quite well despite odds that they wouldn’t be so successful. However, in the West they got F block which was great because that would allow them to have an additional 20mhz. North East however they got the E block...
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monkeyracer

Sep 19, 2006, 2:01 AM

Sprint got the best deal it seems

267 million people, and they only spent $2.4 billion, in joint ventures with cable companies.
Hmm... I wonder if this was the 4G spectrum sprint needed, or maybe the TV broadcast spectrum for DVBH (or similar technologies)??

Rich Brome

... I wonder if this was the 4G spectrum sprint needed, or maybe the TV broadcast spectrum for DVBH (or similar technologies)??

Neither. That spectrum is already allocated.

Sprint Nextel already has the 2.5 GHz spectrum th...
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nextel18

Yea, spectrum co, who are the cable companies and Sprint, did a very good job with expanding their existing licenses. Now, they can do anything they want and they can increase their capacity by adding it onto their new joint venture they have over the...
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peanutblue

Sep 19, 2006, 9:59 AM

Dang, son...

... that's a lot of money.

PhilR8

yeah, not bad. This can be used to fund the war in iraq for another three months.

From USAToday article that supposes US spends $144 million per day in iraq: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselection s/nation/president/2004-08-26-iraq-war-clock...
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longhorntodd

Sep 19, 2006, 10:03 AM

Present or Future

I was thinking how do you determine a winner or loser in this auction. Companies are taking different approaches to this auction. Several companies are planning for the future while others are planning for the here and now. Companies like Leap and MetroPCS are looking to capitalize on this spectrum as quickly as possible while Verizon, Cingular and Sprint are looking to position themselves for the future. TMO is attacking for both perspectives. Who are some of these other players and who are they bidding for or what are they planning on doing with that spectrum? Anyone know?

PhilR8

The problem is we have no frame of reference as the layman. What frequencies were bid on? Verizon spent a ton of money, but only on spectrum east of the mississippi. Why? Sprint now owns spectrum jointly with cable companies, but does that mean th...
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jerry 12

Sep 19, 2006, 8:26 PM

uscc

why does uscc bid for LICENSE under some one else name ? 😕

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