The midband spectrum is mostly available in rural areas
The Federal Communications Commission has officially granted the first batch of recently auctioned 2.5 GHz overlay licenses, from an auction which was dominated by T-Mobile US.
T-Mobile US was already the dominant license and lease-holder in that band, from spectrum which it acquired with Sprint. (See our piece on five key takeaways from the 2.5 GHz auction here.)
The 2.5 GHz auction had a field of 82 qualified bidders, and 63 of them walked away with licenses. The FCC says that 77% of those winning bidders qualified as either small businesses or entities which serve rural communities. Most of those bidders (around 50) bought 15 or fewer licenses. The auction raised around $419 million in net bids, with 63 bidders winning 7,872 licenses.
From those winning bidders, the FCC has received 68 total long-form applications and has now granted 51 of them. Among them were 15 applicants which received small-business bidding credits and 23 with rural service provider bidding credits.
Licenses have been granted to winning bidders including US Cellular, Verizon, the North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation, Evergy Kansas Central, NSight American Samoa Telecommunications Authority, Broadband One of the Midwest, Carolina West Wireless, Cellular South and LICT Wireless Broadband Company, among others.
FCC staff is still reviewing the remaining long-form applications.
The top five auction winners based on total gross bids were T-Mobile US at $304.3 million; PTI Pacifica at $17.7 million; TeleGuam Holdings at $16.6 million; Evergy Kansas Central at $12.7 million; and Cellular South at $11.9 million. In terms of which companies won the most individual licenses, the top five were T-Mo with 7,156 licenses; the North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation with 107; Evergy Kansas Central with 54 licenses; LICT Wireless Broadband Company with 46; and Broadband One of the Midwest with 42 licenses.
“This is important spectrum, especially for rural America. I am grateful to our team for
moving forward quickly but carefully in processing these applications,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. “We continue to focus on ensuring that mid-band spectrum is available for 5G and other next-generation wireless services.”
