Once-Worthless Radio Waves Get New Life in Spectrum Auction

Cellphone carriers often call their most valuable radio-wave licenses “beachfront” property. As with real estate, it pays to be in a prime location. Government officials will test that thinking this month by selling some once-barren tracts of that virtual real estate in the upper reaches of the wireless spectrum. How much companies are willing to pay for them remains to be seen. The Federal Communications Commission began the first of two auctions for extremely high-frequency spectrum licenses, raising cash from a type of radio wave once considered useless for wireless service. Recent technological advances have made those frequencies more useful, and officials are counting on the spectrum sales to kick-start the first offerings of fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless service. Authorities will first auction off licenses around 28 gigahertz and follow it with a second auction for licenses above 24 gigahertz. Both sales will test the market’s appetite for a technology that hasn’t yet been put to commercial use outside a few test cities.