Shift Magazine - August 2021 - 20

Telecoms spent big on licenses to make
high-speed 5G-network performance real
- enabling next-gen auto technology
SPECTRUM
SPENDING SPREE
Top U.S. wireless carriers want
the bandwidth being freed
up by dish-company users to
benefit their 5G networks.
BY JACK KEEBLER
E
arly this year, the Federal Communications
Commission
announced
the results of a landmark
auction, one that yielded
nearly $81.2 billion.
Up for grabs were spots on a valuable
radio spectrum known as the
piece of
" C-band, " and the top bidders were the
nation's premier wireless carriers. The
stakes were high. How well these companies
did at auction could help determine
who will take the lead as the nation transitions
to 5G wireless technology.
This prize was the final puzzle piece
in a three-part network approach that
requires low-, mid- and high-frequency
5G radio waves to function widely and
properly. The C-band falls in the midrange
category.
Adam Koeppe, Verizon's senior vice
president of technology planning, explained
why his company paid $45.5 billion to
acquire its licenses in
this critical
radio
spectrum. (That amount rises to nearly $53
billion once you factor in related costs and
20 shift * august 2021
BIG SPENDERS
The FCC C-band spectrum auction
that concluded Feb. 17 yielded
$81.2 billion in gross bids. Twentyone
bidders won a total of 5,684
licenses. Here are the top 5 bidders
BIDDER
GROSS WINNING BIDS
Verizon Wireless $45,454,843,197
AT&T
T-Mobile
U.S. Cellular
NewLevel II*
$23,406,860,839
$9,336,125,147
$1,282,641,542
$1,277, 395,688
*Affiliated with private equity firm Grain Management
incentive payments.)
" C-band provides a valuable middle
ground between capacity and coverage
for 5G networks, " said Koeppe, " and will
enable greater speeds than 5G on the
low-band spectrum and greater coverage
than the [millimeter wave] spectrum
for both mobility and home broadband
solutions. "
Verizon shelled out nearly twice as
ROBUST 5G COVERAGE SOUGHT
Why were invisible U.S. electromagnetic
territories, occupied since the 1970s by
four or five satellite-dish companies, worth
so much to wireless carrier bidders such as
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile?
The answer is that until late this year,
when that 3.70- to 3.98-gigahertz bandwidth
within C-band will be cleared of
current dish-company
users, next-gen
5G coverage will not actually be broadly
available or regularly operating at its peak
speed of " 100 times faster " than 4G. And
without the muscle and sinew of C-band
supplementing the 5G network's reliability,
low latency (1 to 5 milliseconds)
and higher speeds, the advantages of
augmented reality, connected vehicles,
much to buy C-band licenses as the second-biggest
bidder,
AT&T, which spent
$23.4 billion. T-Mobile says it " strategically
invested " just more than $9.3 billion
to acquire C-band licenses.
Analysts, before the bidding, estimated
C-band frequency licenses might bring
between $40 billion and $60 billion.
Shift Magazine - August 2021

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