The Priority Access License auction appears to be winding down, with licenses still in contention in fewer than 350 U.S. counties out of more than 3,200.
As of the close of 28 rounds of bidding, the auction had raised nearly $2.2 billion in bids from its 271 qualified bidders. The bid amount more than doubled over the course of the past week; the auction total hit $1 billion at the end of last Friday’s bidding. Three more bidding rounds will be held today.
According to analysis by Sasha Javid, COO at the Spectrum Consortium and former chief data officer and legal advisor on the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force, the average price per megahertz/POP was at $0.106539 after the 28rd round of bidding. Comparatively, the last three millimeter wave auctions stacked up with nationwide price per MHz/POPs and totals raised of:
- Auction 101 (28 GHz): $0.0113 MHz/POP, $702 million raised
- Auction 102 (24 GHz): $0.009112 MHz/POP, $2 billion raised
- Auction 103 (upper 37, 39 and 42 GHz): $0.007110 MHz/POP, $7.5 billion raised
The PALs with the highest prices as of the close of Round 28 are:
- Los Angeles county, CA: $25.8 million
- Cook county, IL: $11.3 million
- San Diego county, CA: $8.1 million
- Orange county, CA: $7.9 million
- Harris county, TX: $6.7 million
On the basis of demand, the most hostly contested counties, their populations and the number of bidders competing for the 7 PALs in each county are:
- San Diego county, CA: 3.1 million; 22 bidders competing for 7 licenses
- Los Angeles county, CA: 9.8 million; 21 bidders
- New York, NY (1.6 million) and Queens, NY (2.2 million): 19 bidders
- Jefferson county, AL (660,000), San Bernardino, CA (2 million) and Riverside county, CA (2.2 million): 18 bidders
- Kings county, NY (2.5 million) and Hidalgo county, TX (775,000): 17 bidders
Demand in recent rounds has concentrated on some of larger and mid-sized markets, after broad interest in counties large and small during earlier rounds. The auction continues to see the number of contested counties drop, as prices are settled upon. As of Round 28, there were 329 counties where demand was greater than the supply of seven PALs. Demand met supply in 1,786 counties, and supply was greater than demand in 1,118 counties. The auction will continue until demand is equal to or less than the supply of available PALs.
The CBRS Priority Access License auction, known as Auction 105, makes available 22,631 PALs in the CBRS band at 3.5 GHz. That figure breaks down to seven PALs per county-based license area across the United States: the highest number of licenses that the FCC has ever made available in a single auction. Each PAL consists of a 10 megahertz unpaired channel at 3.55-3.65 GHz. Entities can bid on up to four PALs per license area and aggregate them; in addition to PALs, 80 megahertz of the 150 megahertz band is available for use under the General Authorized Access (GAA) tier of the CBRS spectrum-sharing framework. If PALs are unsold at the close of the auction, the spectrum can be assigned for GAA use.
