Auctions

Sens Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the Broadband Reserve Fund Act. This legislation would require the net proceeds from the C-Band spectrum auction to be deposited into a reserve fund at the Department of Treasury to be used to expand broadband access and digital opportunity, modernize the nation’s communications infrastructure, and meet other connectivity priorities.

A high-stakes auction of government-owned airwaves to mobile broadband providers is set to drop a record windfall exceeding $80 billion into the US Treasury. Two additional auctions of wireless frequency bands, called spectrum, are on tap for 2021 and slated to follow the same course. The nation has become painfully aware of the digital divides that are widening inequality, slowing productivity, and impeding innovation.

While you probably never thought you needed to understand the intricacies of how cellular networks operated by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon work, some big news that affects those operations will have real-world impacts on the services that they offer and that we rely on. In every country around the world except the US, 5G networks have been built around mid-band spectrum because it offers the right combination of coverage area and width of data lanes over which our TV shows can be streamed, Instagram posts uploaded, worldwide web browsed, etc.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the winning bidders and the final bid totals in Auction 107—commonly referred to as the C-band auction. Auction 107 net winning bids totaled $81,114,481,921 and gross winning bids totaled $81,168,677,645. Twenty-one bidders won all of the available 5,684 licenses. Verizon was the big winner -- nearly $45.5 billion spent to gain 3,511 licenses. AT&T was a distant second: nearly $23.5 billion spent on 1,621 licenses. T-Mobile spent $9.3 billion on 142 licenses. Down payments on the spectrum licenses are due March 10.

Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel shared with her colleagues a draft Order that would make much-needed mid-band spectrum available for 5G. If adopted at the FCC’s March 17 Open Meeting, 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the 3.45-3.55 GHz band would be made available for auction and 5G deployment across the contiguous United States.

We’ve been promised a fourth industrial revolution with fantastical things like remote surgery and driverless cars. Instead, what we have now is widespread 5G that’s more or less the same speed as (or even slower than) 4G and super-fast mmWave 5G in some parts of some major cities with highly limited range. So where is this 5G future we’ve been promised? The truth is that it’s coming along, but it will materialize more slowly and in less obvious ways than what we’ve been led to believe.

The next big spectrum tug of war will play out in the 12 GHz band, where a broad 500 MHz of spectrum could be available for fixed or mobile use, possibly involving 5G and Wi-Fi. The Federal Communications Commission in Jan adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) about possibly changing the rules for the 12 GHz band that could allow spectrum sharing and other changes. The NPRM is likely to generate a barrage of comments including diverse and, in some cases, mutually exclusive, recommendations.

Wireless carriers clearly believe their own press about 5G. And they are wagering a huge sum to prove it. The latest auction of wireless spectrum licenses by the Federal Communications Commission ended on January 15 with a total of $80.9 billion.

I’d like to walk you through four of the most challenging calls I had to make over the past four years: The Restoring Internet Freedom Order, designating the Sinclair/Tribune transaction for a hearing to resolve the disputed issues, granting Ligado's wireless application with conditions, and organizing 5G/C-Band auctions. 

The Federal Communications Commission announced the conclusion of bidding in the clock phase of Auction 107, the largest auction of mid-band 5G spectrum, and the highest-grossing spectrum auction overall, ever held in the United States. The auction made available licenses for 280 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.7- 3.98 GHz band—a portion of the so-called C-band. Bidders have won all of the 5,684 spectrum blocks that were up for bid.