The government’s plans to auction off 10 megahertz of spectrum in the upper 1.9 GHz band lost an interested party today as Sprint announced it would not participate in the auction of the H-Block assets.
Speaking at an investor conference in New York, Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer said the carrier was more interested in acquiring low-band spectrum assets to power its future network plans. Sprint already controls between 10 megahertz and 40 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band as well as more than 120 megahertz of spectrum across the country in the 2.5 GHz band.
“Sprint is focused on gaining access to more low-band spectrum to add to the company’s spectrum portfolio, so we have opted not to participate in the upcoming H-Block auction,” Sprint noted in a statement following Euteneuer’s comments. “With the launch of Sprint Spark, Sprint is working to deploy its 2.5 GHz licenses along with licenses in 800 MHz and 1.9 MHz to provide customers greater network speeds and capacity. We expect to offer Sprint Spark in approximately 100 of the largest U.S. cities by the end of 2016.”
Sprint late last month announced its Spark program, which will look to tie together the carrier’s spectrum holdings to offer high-speed LTE services. Those spectrum bands include the carriers current 1.9 GHz G-Band spectrum being used as the base of its initial FDD-LTE deployment, plans to begin adding in 800 MHz spectrum re-farmed from the shutdown of its iDEN network, and to then tap into the vast 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings from Clearwire, which Sprint recently gained full control over. Analysts have noted that the 2.5 GHz spectrum is the real crux of Sprint’s speed plans as the depth of those assets reach to more than 120 megahertz in most markets. That 2.5 GHz spectrum will also utilize the TDD-LTE standard, which allows for dynamic usage of spectrum resources. The carrier noted that lab testing across the network has shown speeds of up to one gigabit per second.
The Federal Communications Commission is set to auction off the H-Block spectrum on Jan. 22. That block will include spectrum in the 1915-1920/1995-2000 MHz bands that are adjacent to Sprint’s current G-Block holdings. That close proximity led many to believe that Sprint would be the most likely candidate to bid on that slice of spectrum.
The spectrum was part of Dish Network’s spectrum holdings prior to the FCC allowing Dish to use some of its spectrum in the 2 GHz band initially set aside for satellite services for a terrestrial network. In allowing Dish to use that spectrum for the terrestrial network, it was forced to give up 10 megahertz of its 40 megahertz total back to the FCC. Dish recently proposed to the FCC that it would bid a minimum of $1.5 billion for the H-Block if the FCC would allow Dish to use that 40 megahertz of spectrum for downlink transmission instead of having to split the spectrum channels for two-way traffic.
Sprint’s latest comments hint that the carrier is likely to be an aggressive bidder in the FCC’s planned auction of 600 MHz spectrum licenses expected to take place late next year or in early 2015. Sprint has been part of a group of carriers and trade associations looking to limit the bidding abilities of Verizon Wireless and AT&T in that auction, noting that those two operators already control a vast majority of low-band spectrum below 1 GHz.
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