en.Wedoany.com Reported - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced on Tuesday local time that its AWS-3 spectrum auction, after a slow start and 72 rounds of bidding, saw total winning bids exceed $3.5 billion, surpassing market expectations.
The FCC stated that the auction, officially named "Auction 113: Advanced Wireless Services (AWS-3)," received bids for all 200 spectrum licenses, with 17 qualified bidders participating, including AT&T, EchoStar, T-Mobile, Verizon, and SpaceX.
New Street Research analyst David Barden noted in a research report that the average price was $2.53 per MHz-POP. Among them, two licenses in Chicago exceeded $4 per MHz-POP, while licenses in New York and Boston were priced at $3.30 per MHz-POP and $3.28 per MHz-POP, respectively.
The list of winning bidders will not be released immediately. An FCC spokesperson said in an email to Light Reading that detailed auction results will be published later via a public notice.
Winning bidders will receive licenses for a set of AWS-3 bands (1695MHz-1710MHz, 1755MHz-1780MHz, and 2155MHz-2180MHz), which can be used to enhance 5G coverage in targeted areas.
The FCC noted that up to $3.3 billion of the auction proceeds will be used to repay loans supporting the agency's "rip and replace" program and other U.S. Department of Commerce initiatives. The FCC also stated that it is now "ready" to conduct an auction of at least 100 MHz of upper C-band spectrum, to be launched no later than July 2027. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement that this successful auction generated billions of dollars in competitive bids, putting spectrum to productive commercial use and enhancing competition in the wireless market. He added that he will carry this momentum into the upcoming upper C-band auction in the coming year. David Barden noted that this result also means EchoStar is completely out of the woods, as the auction proceeds are approximately 4% higher than the price EchoStar/Dish paid for these AWS-3 licenses in the original auction.
Under an agreement reached before the auction began on June 2, EchoStar was required to pay a penalty to the FCC if total bids fell below the $2.9 billion threshold. A few days ago, bids in the AWS-3 auction had already exceeded $3.1 billion.
Barden pointed out that the auction results also provide insight into the value of EchoStar's AWS-3 spectrum, estimated at approximately $8.1 billion or $2.94 per MHz-POP. He noted that investors may believe the spectrum should be worth more, as it is a larger block of spectrum that could be more valuable in the hands of a strategic buyer. Recon Analytics analyst and founder Roger Entner said he is not surprised to see the spectrum value higher than the price Dish/EchoStar originally paid. He noted that most of Dish's spectrum sits between blocks already held by major mobile network operators (MNOs), making these MNOs "natural buyers" of the spectrum, who could use it to create larger contiguous channels. It remains unclear how much these natural buyers (AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile) ultimately acquired, or whether any of the other 14 qualified bidders stepped in for deployment or future resale. Entner said it will be interesting to see whether SpaceX actually placed bids, and if so, whether its goal was to prepare for the upcoming upper C-band auction. He wondered, was this a trial run, or were they just watching?
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