The Priority Access License auction has raised $3 billion in bids after 34 rounds. The number of licenses that are still seeing competitive bids is now at about 256 counties out of the more than 3,200 counties in the U.S. and its territories.
According to analysis by Sasha Javid, COO at BitPath and former chief data officer and legal advisor on the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force, the average price per megahertz/POP was at $0.147428 after the 34th 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
Auction observers Rick Engelman and Ari Meltzer at law firm Wiley noted in a blog post that as of round 31, “excess demand has been trending downward, with a 32% drop on Friday and a 40% drop on Thursday” of last week. “As prices continue to rise, we expect to continue to see bidders reduce their bids in high priced markets more quickly and, perhaps, shift some demand to less expensive markets. Eventually, this will lead to a narrowing of the aggregate excess and a slowing of the growth in gross proceeds and overall average bid prices,” they concluded.
The PALs with the highest prices as of the close of Round 34 are:
- Los Angeles county, CA: $45.7 million
- San Diego county, CA: $14.45 million
- Orange county, CA: $14.08 million
- Kings county, NY: $11.7 million
- Cook county, IL: $11.3 million
On the basis of demand, as of Round 34, the most hostly contested counties and the number of bidders competing for the 7 PALs in each county are Maricopa county, AZ and San Diego county, CA, each with16 bidders competing for 7 licenses. In New Haven county, CT, Clark county, NV and Jefferson county, AL, 15 bidders are in competition. Another six counties have 14 bidders vying for the seven licenses. Of the 11 counties with the most demand as of Round 34, all but three have populations less than 1 million.
The auction will continue until demand is equal to or less than the supply of available PALs.
The auction could see fresh enthusiasm among the 271 qualified bidders on news from the White House and Department of Defense that contiguous spectrum at 3.45-3.55 GHz will be opened up for terrestrial 5G wireless service, with an auction potentially happening as soon as late 2021.
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.
