FCC Begins Major 5G Spectrum Auction

The Federal Communications Commission kicked off its latest 5G spectrum auction, making available 280 megahertz of prime mid-band spectrum in the 3.7-3.98 GHz band—a portion of the C-band. This is the FCC’s largest midband 5G spectrum auction to date. The first round of the clock phase of the auction will start Dec 8 at 10 a.m. ET. This auction will offer 5,684 new flexible-use overlay licenses based on Partial Economic Areas (PEAs) for spectrum in the 3.7–3.98 GHz band. This spectrum holds the potential to be prime spectrum for 5G services given its combination of geographic coverage and capacity, and the FCC’s auction procedures will ensure the assignment to auction winners of contiguous spectrum blocks allowing wide channel bandwidths that support 5G deployment. Satellite operators currently using the C-Band have agreed to repack their operations out of the band’s lower 300 megahertz (3.7-4.0 GHz) into the upper 200 megahertz (4.0-4.2 GHz). The first phase of this transition—the clearing of 120 megahertz of spectrum from 3.7-3.82 GHz in 46 of the nation’s top 50 PEAs—will conclude by Dec 5, 2021. The second phase— clearing the lower 120 megahertz of spectrum in the remaining PEAs, plus an additional 180 megahertz from 3.82-4.0 GHz nationwide—will conclude by Dec 5, 2023.