Auction of midband spectrum in rural areas starts with a single, full-day round of bidding
The first, day-long round of bidding on about 8,000 midband spectrum licenses at 2.5 GHz has officially begun.
Bidding began in the Federal Communication Commission’s Auction 108 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time and will continue until 4 p.m. today. Two two-hour bidding rounds are scheduled for Monday.
There is a field of 82 qualified bidders, including the three national wireless network operators, US Cellular and Dish Wireless, bidding under the name Carbonate Wireless.
There are also a significant number of small and medium-sized telecom network operators set to participate in the auction, including Carolina West Wireless, Cellular South Wireless, Copper Valley Wireless, Granite Wireless, Nex-Tech Wireless, NSight, Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Redzone Wireless and Union Telephone Company.
There will be approximately 8,000 county-level licenses up for grabs, largely limited to rural areas of the United States. The 2.5 GHz (2.496-2.690 GHz) spectrum available in this auction is being sold as overlay licenses, as a result of FCC action in the past few years to reform the use of the band, which used to be known as the Educational Broadband Service (EBS) band. The former Sprint, in particular, had built up extensive leasing arrangements across the country with educational institutions who held EBS licenses. T-Mobile US acquired Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum when it bought the rival carrier and has relied heavily on that midband spectrum deployment for its 5G services. This auction gives the operator the chance to buy still more 2.5 GHz spectrum as it continues to emphasize its pursuit of customers in smaller and rural areas.
There are three channels available, according to the FCC band plan: Channel 1, which is 49.5 megahertz of spectrum; Channel 2 is adjacent to Channel 1 and consists of 50.5 megahertz of spectrum. There is also a smaller channel, Channel 3, which consists of 17.5 megahertz and is not adjacent to either of the other two channels.
The will use an ascending clock format auction. The FCC has put together a new mapping tool so that would-be bidders can find out whether there are unassigned 2.5 GHz licenses in areas they are considering.
