The FCC’s Auction 110 results are official. The winners of the FCC’s 5G spectrum auction of flexible-use licenses in the 3.45 GHz band are as follows:
The five bidders with the largest total gross bids were:
AT&T: $9.1B
DISH (bidding as Weminuche): $7.3B
T-Mobile: $2.9B
345 Spectrum: $1.3B
UScellular: $579M
New Street Research characterized the big gap between DISH’s $7.3B bids and T-Mobile’s $2.98B bids as “surprising.”
Notably, Verizon didn’t bid, according to MoffettNathanson. “AT&T’s $9B translates to nearly a quarter turn of additional leverage,” notes the analyst firm in their client note on Friday. “And for Dish Network, it is roughly two years of EBITDA, or two full turns.”
Now starts the spending to put the new spectrum to work, the analysts note. “The carriers did not pay up for this spectrum to allow it to languish in a fallow state, and the towers will be natural beneficiaries of the deployment process over the coming years. Carrier plans for the C-band suggest that spectrum will ultimately be deployed in a fairly broad-based manner, rather than just in more densely populated areas of the country, and a similar result seems likely for this spectrum, given its broadly similar propagation attributes,” it states in the client note on Friday.
The five bidders winning the most licenses were:
AT&T: 1,624
DISH: 1,232
UScellular: 380
Cherry Wireless: 319
T-Mobile: 199
Thirteen of the 23 companies with winning bids in Auction 110 qualified as small businesses or as entities serving rural communities. In addition, compared to the prior 5G auction, this auction saw a substantial increase in the number of winning bidders per market: over one-third of the top 100 markets have at least four winning bidders, compared with 10 percent of the top 100 markets for Auction 107, according to the agency. The FCC says this broader range and distribution of winning bidders will increase competition by providing a diversity of wireless carriers with the mid-band spectrum resources needed for 5G.
The 3.45 GHz auction results “demonstrate that the Commission’s pivot to mid-band spectrum for 5G was the right move,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “I am pleased to see that this auction also is creating opportunities for a wider variety of competitors, including small businesses and rural service providers.” She said this is a result of the agency’s efforts to structure the auction with diversity and competition front of mind.
Rosenworcel continued: “Enabling commercial use of this spectrum is important to America’s continuing economic recovery and 5G leadership, and I look forward to the continued collaboration between the FCC, NTIA, and other federal agencies to find innovative ways to make spectrum available for next generation commercial and government services.”
Auction 110 saw winning bidders in the clock phase for 4,041 of the 4,060 available generic blocks in the 3.45–3.55 GHz band. Gross proceeds for the auction exceeded $22.5 billion. This surpasses the congressional requirement that Auction 110 cover at least 110 percent of the expected sharing and repack costs for federal users currently operating in the band—in this case $14,775,354,330, based on a January 14, 2021, estimate from NTIA. Notably, the 3.45 GHz auction closed as one of highest grossing auctions in the FCC’s history.
The auction will enable robust commercial use by an array of service providers, while also ensuring that federal incumbents are still protected from harmful interference where and when they require continued access to the band, according to the FCC. Collectively, the 3.45 GHz band and the neighboring 3.5 GHz and 3.7 GHz bands represent 530 MHz of mid-band spectrum for 5G.
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