Verizon Emerges as Top Bidder in Largest High-Band Auction
The largest auction in the history of high-band spectrum is over with the close of the assignment phase a week ago, with Verizon the biggest bidder, the FCC said Thursday. The auction of 37, 39 and 47 GHz spectrum brought in more than $7.5 billion in net bids. The major wireless carriers dominated. The FCC will pay out $3.1 billion for existing licensees to leave the band, leaving net proceeds of more than $4.4 billion. This was the FCC’s third high-band auction, after earlier sales of 24 and 28 GHz band spectrum.
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“If there’s a surprise … it’s that Verizon already had far more millimeter wave spectrum than anyone else, and yet they ended up being the biggest buyer,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett told us: “At a time when most observers think Verizon is already overly dependent on millimeter wave, they doubled down.”
“T-Mobile's 5G spectrum plans are different than Verizon, which is not surprising,” said New Street’s Blair Levin: “Companies tend to develop strategies based on the assets they have ... not the assets they might wish they had,” he said: “This year will mark a number of cases where companies make different bets on the value of diverse spectrum bands.”
Straight Path Spectrum, owned by Verizon, was the biggest player, winning 4,940 licenses in 411 markets, with gross payments of $3.4 billion, and net of $1.6 billion. AT&T’s Fiber Tower was second, scoring 3,267 licenses in 411 markets, with $2.4 billion in gross payments and $1.2 billion in net.
Many observers had watched T-Mobile, which has offered a mixed view of high band. The company won 2,384 licenses in 399 markets. Its gross payments were $932 million, with net of $873 million.
Other larger bidders included Window Wireless, winning 2,651 licenses in 416 markets for $203 million, with no relinquished licenses, and High Band, 52 licenses in 22 markets, for $307 million. U.S. Cellular won 237 licenses in 70 markets, for $146 million. Five bidders received small-company bidding credits, eight got rural credits.
The auction “brought more mmWave spectrum into the hands of people who plan to use it,” emailed Roger Entner of Recon Analytics: “Most of the bidding at auction 103 was in the 37 and 39 GHz part of the auction. The 47 GHz part was relatively light.”
The auction was “one more significant step the FCC has taken toward maintaining American leadership in 5G,” said Chairman Ajit Pai. Together, the auctions offered “more spectrum than is currently used for terrestrial mobile broadband by all wireless service providers in the United States combined,” he said.