Auction 108 LIcense Inventory - Alabama Mon, Feb 22, 2021

Evaluating Potential Markets - EBS Whitespace Auction Primer | 2.5GHz (3 of 3) Tue, Oct 06, 2020

In August, we had blog post that discussed the counties that are on the EBS band plan and the way that the EBS license areas were determined.  In this post we are going to examine how to use our EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunities Tool.

The EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunities Tool provides carriers, telephone companies, internet service providers (ISP), cable companies, investors, and financial analysts with the tools to evaluate the opportunities in this auction.

As we discussed before, this auction will provide the winner's access to 3 wide band channels in the EBS (2.5GHz) band.  One channels is 49.5 MHz, one channel is 50.5 MHz, and one channel is a combined 17.5 MHz.  In the images below, we indicate how each of the existing EBS channels (A1,A2,..) are component channels in the larger wide band EBS Auction channels.

EBS Auction Channel 1:

EBS Auction Channel 2:

EBS Auction Channel 3:

The population that a bidder can serve is determined by the unlicensed population for each of the component channels within each EBS auction channel.

Below is an example of two counties in West Virginia where 100% of the county population is available for each component channel in the EBS Auction Channel 1.  In our EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunities Tool this is seen in the Spectrum Grid (% POPs) worksheet.  The percentage of the available unlicensed population is divided by the full county population.

Population Percentage Worksheet:

The second worksheet in the EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunities Tool provides the discrete available unlicensed population for each component channel as well as total MHz-POPs for the entire EBS Auction Channel. 

Population Worksheet:

Our next example is a Nevada county that has varying available whitespace population for each component channel.  In the POPs view immediately below, the available whitespace population for EBS Auction Channel 1 varies from 2,024 for the A1 component channel to 43,872 for the B2 channel.

Population Worksheet:

In the % POPS view, the population comparison to the total county population is highlighted with Red to Green cell colors.  For the A1 component channel, the 2,024 available whitespace POPs represents 4% of the Douglas county population while for the B2 component channel, the 43,872 available whitespace POPs represents 93% of the Douglas county population.

Population Percentage Worksheet:

Available Whitespace Area:

In addition to Population Analysis to each component channel, purchasers of the EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunity Tool also receive access to our EBS Whitespace Mapping module in our Web Spectrum Viewer.  Selecting either the A1 component channel cell for POPS or for % POPs, the whitespace license area map for that component channel is displayed.

A1 Component Channel Whitespace Area:

For the B2 component channel the whitespace license area fills a majority of Douglas county reflecting the 92% population availability.

B2 Component Channel Whitespace Area:

The EBS Whitespace Auction Opportunities Tools is available either as a nationwide purchase (all 50 states and US territories) or a state by state purchase.  The purchase will enable carriers and investors to evaluate their opportunity to add 2.5GHz spectrum in the targeted markets and it will allow investors to quantity the national or state opportunities for these new channels as well as provide an evaluation of the strength or weakness of the existing 2.5GHz licensee in each market.

Frequency Band Ownership - CBRS PAL Licenses Tue, Sep 08, 2020

The 10 highest bidders in the CBRS auction are shown in the table below.  How did each of these bidders' investments translate into the percent of the their ownership within the CBRS band? 

In our Frequency Band Ownership chart from our updated Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, you can see the relative ownership percentages based upon each bidders total MHz-POPs in the CBRS band.  Clearly the top 5 bidders turned their investment into a significant share of the CBRS band.

Geographic Service Areas - EBS Whitespace Auction Primer (2 of 3) Tue, Aug 11, 2020

The primary challenge in evaluating the EBS Whitespace auction opportunities, lies with the available licensing information provided by FCC.  For each of the EBS licenses, the FCC provides a map for a 35 mile radius circle from the license centerpoint.  Below is the FCC map for WHR463, an EBS A1 channel license in Los Angeles county.  Not indicated in this map, is the overlap that this license has with two other A1 channel licenses in Los Angeles county.

WHR463:

In two images below, it is clear that a significant portion WHR463's 35 mile radius license area is shared with WHG227 and WND634.  

WHG227:

WND634:

The FCC resolves these overlap issues through the creation of Geographic Service Areas (GSA) for each license_channel combination.  The starting point is to look at all of the 35 mile overlaps on an individual channel basis, e.g. A1, A2, ...

Here is an example case with 5 licenses in a 4 county area.

The Geographic Service Areas are initially created by bisecting each of the overlapping areas (splitting the football) so each license has its own exclusive area.

 The GSA's were formed based upon active licenses on a specific date.  Licenses that were issued after this date (PSA6) do not claim any part of the overlap area with existing GSAs.

 These GSA's are sometimes referred to as "Cookie Bite" GSAs.

After the GSA's were formed, any cancelled or terminated licenses lost their area, but none of that area is added to the GSAs that previously overlapped the cancelled/terminated licenses.

The map below represents the licensed spectrum in this 4 county area, prior to the EBS Whitespace Auction for a specific channel.

The final representation of the unlicensed (whitespace) area in each county that will be available in the auction is the area from the GSA boundary for each license to the county boundary.

Going back to Los Angeles County A1 channel example, you can see the WHG227, WHR463, and WND634 licenses in the center of the map reflecting each of their A1 Channel GSAs.

Our final map indicates the whitespace area for the A1 channel in Los Angeles county.  Call signs WHG227 and WND634 were both cancelled after the GSA boundaries were computed, thus their license area is now part of the A1 channel EBS Whitespace, indicated in the orange cross hatch. 

Counties on the Wrong Band Plan - EBS Whitespace Auction Primer (1 of 3) Thu, Aug 06, 2020

Source: FCC

Auction 103 Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool Update and Release Thu, Mar 12, 2020

Spektrum Metrics Insights & Analytics is pleased to announce that our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool has been updated with the Auction 103 results and is available for purchase.

Below is a sample of the Spectrum Grid Analysis Module, highlighting the 37/39 GHz spectrum ownership for the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago CMA markets.

The Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool contains 20 additional analysis modules including:

• Spectrum Depth - County
• Spectrum Depth - Company Profile
• Spectrum Depth - NR Band Class
• Spectrum Depth - Frequency Band
• Spectrum Depth - Market
• Cellular Market Area (CMA)
• Partial Economic Area (PEA)
• Designated Market Area (DMA)
• Spectrum Depth - Country
• Spectrum Depth - State
• Spectrum Depth - Channel
• Licensed POPs Analysis
• By Channel
• By Frequency Band
• MHz-POPs Analysis
• By Frequency Band
• By Country
• NR Channel Analysis 
• Contiguous Spectrum Analysis
• Frequency Band Ownership Analysis

With our Web Spectrum Viewer subscription, maps for each carrier's total Millimeter Wave spectrum depth and their spectrum depth for each frequency band are available.  Below is a map for the 47GHz spectrum that Sprint won in Auction 103.

Click here to contact Spektrum Metrics Insights & Analytics.

Millimeter Wave Auction Results and Charts Mon, Jun 03, 2019

Today, the FCC released results for Auction 101 (28 GHz) and Auction 102 (24 GHz).  These results are now posted in our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool.  The Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool provides 19 analysis modules to analyze each carrier's ownership in each of the millimeter wave bands.  These modules include a spectrum ownership grid (below), seven different spectrum depth analysis modules, a MHz-POPs analysis module, and 3 licensed POPs analysis modules.

To summarize some of the auction results, we updated pie charts that were originally published in partnership with Fierce Wireless.  These charts represent each carrier's MHz-POPs in terms of the country total.

24GHz:

28GHz;

39GHz:

Background on Unavailable Spectrum - 24GHz (Auction 102) Tue, Apr 09, 2019

As Auction 102 completes its 64th round today, I thought it would be a good time to share a map indicating the markets (PEA) where existing licensees already control spectrum prior to the start of the Auction 102.  As you can see below, the FCC doesn't control 100MHz of the 24GHz spectrum in Reno (PEA076), Las Vegas (PEA026), and Phoenix (PEA015).  The FCC also doesn't control 25MHz of spectrum in Albuquerque (PEA075).  All of these licenses originally were controlled by M&M Brothers LLC and they track back to the original 40x40MHz channelization of the 24GHz band.  M&M Brothers agreed to trade in their Casa Grande (PEA126), Saint George (PEA229), Gallup (PEA285), Socorro (PEA323), and Deming (PEA375) licenses for 100MHz licenses in the 3 yellow PEAs and a 25MHz license in the blue.  Skyriver Spectrum & Technology now controls M&M Brothers licenses.

While the national map indicates the available spectrum depth on a PEA basis, our Spectrum Grid Analysis Module details the specific channels and counties that make up each of the PEA license assignments.  In the Spectrum Grid, you can see complete ownership of channel 7 for all of the counties in PEA 15, 26, and 76; with on 25MHz in the two New Mexico counties.

39GHz - Auction 103 Reconfiguration Analysis - Number Blocks Tue, Mar 26, 2019

On March 21st, the FCC released a Notice of Procedures describing how existing 39GHz spectrum ownership below will be remapped to the new 39GHz configuration.  We thought it would be beneficial to see how the FCC arrived at their results.

Current Configuration:

Future Configuration:

The procedures the FCC announced will provide a route for the existing 39GHz owners to essentially trade-in their spectrum for vouchers that can be used in Auction 103.  The FCC published a summary of the aggregated holdings data for each of the 39GHz licensees so we decided to use the data from our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to show the underlying calculations.

We are able to use the data from our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to determine the aggregate MHz-POPs value for PEA003 (Chicago).  To find the aggregate MHz-POPs we must first find the MHz-POPs contribution for each of AT&T's licenses (call signs) in the Chicago market.  Below are each of the county MHz-POPs components for each call sign.  We have indicated whether the license covers the entire county or whether it is a partial license in the Full/Partial County column.  The county MHz-POPs component is found by multiplying the bandwidth for each call sign by the county population.  The total aggregate MHz-POPs is the sum of the county MHz-POPs for all of AT&T's licenses.  Using this process, we have found AT&T's aggregate MHz-POPs to by 2,817,188,800 compared to the FCC's results of 2,815,434,000.

The Market MHz-POPs value is found by multiplying the new 39GHz channel size (100MHz) by the total population of the Chicago PEA.  

The next calculation provides the number of blocks that AT&T is authorized to receive in the 39GHz auction by relinquishing their current licenses.  Our analysis indicates that AT&T will start with slightly more than 3 - 100MHz channel blocks in Chicago before the auction starts.

Millimeter Wave spectrum under FCC control, by band? Tue, May 08, 2018

To determine how much Millimeter Wave spectrum is controlled by the FCC, we utilize the National & State Market Analysis module from our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool.  The values below are calculated as population weighted averages of the FCC's controlled spectrum at the county-level.  On average, the FCC has nearly 3500 MHz of spectrum available. Most of that spectrum (2700 MHz) is coming from the newly identified spectrum bands (37GHz and 47GHz) along with the reconfigured and expanded 24GHz.

Dish's AWS-3 Licenses - Back in Play Thu, Aug 31, 2017

 Last week the US Court of Appeals  determined that the Dish had too much control of its affiliates (Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless) and the FCC acted properly by denying both affiliates their combined $3.3 Billion in bidding credits which ultimately lead to Northstar and SNR giving back many of their AWS-3.    In Dish's favor, the court determined that the FCC needed to provide Northstar and SNR with the opportunity to revise their contracts with Dish to comply with the issue of control.    This opens the opportunity for Dish to regain some of the AWS-3 licenses they collectively won at the auction.  Below we have listed the licenses and channels that Northstar and SNR each returned to the FCC.

600 MHz Band Plans Tue, Jul 26, 2016

To properly reflect the upcoming 600MHz spectrum in our Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool we created a band plan that details the spectrum that will be available for markets based upon the spectrum cleared.  The Uplink and Downlink Allocations chart provides the best visualization of how the uplink and downlink spectrum increase as the cleared spectrum increases.  This image indicates how uplink channels in high channel availability markets will be operating in the downlink spectrum of low channel availability markets.  In addition it demonstrates that in the 8-12 channel markets, channels that are contiguous in the uplink spectrum, may be discontiguous in the downlink spectrum due to the Channel 37 quiet zone and its guard bands.  You can also note that the channel adjacent to the 700 MHz A-Block spectrum will not be consistent since it will be tied to the spectrum clearing targets.  For example, New York (10 channel) could have Channel J adjacent to the 700 MHz A-Block while Los Angeles (5 channel) would have Channel E adjacent to the 700MHz A-Block.

600 MHz Uplink and Downlink Allocations:

How does our data compare? AT&T Plays a Broken Record of Broken Promises – Posted by Andy Levin, T-Mobile Mon, Aug 24, 2015

For this issue of “How does our data compare?” we will look at the following statement from Andy Levin’s blog.  Andy is T-Moble’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs.

"AT&T’s practice of making promises it cannot keep is matched only by its ability to make claims that cannot withstand scrutiny. In the run-up to the 600 MHz auction, for instance, AT&T has derided the spectrum reserve as a “set aside” that “picks winners and losers.” 
 
The claim is laughable: if the reserve is a set-aside, it is a set-aside that AT&T or Verizon can claim in nearly three-quarters of the country.  The map below shows the markets where AT&T or Verizon can purchase all the spectrum blocks available in the upcoming 600 MHz auction."

AT&T Plays a Broken Record of Broken Promises – Andy Levin, T-Mobile, Sr VP, Government Affairs

Using Allnet Insights’ Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool we are able to evaluate AT&T and Verizon’s low band spectrum ownership for all US Partial Economic Area (PEA) markets.  We then created a geographic map. This map graphed 4 categories: 

• Markets where Verizon exceeds 44MHz of spectrum (Red)
• Markets where AT&T exceeds 44MHz of spectrum (Blue)
• Markets where both AT&T and Verizon exceed 44MHz of spectrum (Purple)
• Markets where neither AT&T or Verizon exceed 44MHz of spectrum (White)

The purple areas from Allnet Insights’ map match the white areas from T-Mobile’s map with the exception of a rural PEA in northern Montana.  These areas represent the PEA markets that both AT&T and Verizon will be limited in the ability to acquire addition low band spectrum.  Clearly from Allnet Insights’ map you can see that there are many additional markets where either AT&T or Verizon is limited, but not both.

How does our data compare? T-Mobile’s Magenta Herring – Posted by Joan Marsh, AT&T Thu, Aug 13, 2015

For this issue of “How does our data compare?” we will look at the following statement from Joan Marsh’s blog.  Joan is AT&T's Vice President of Federal Regulatory. 

"For AT&T, the restrictions will predominantly impact our ability to compete for spectrum in urban areas.  Indeed, our preliminary analysis suggests that we will be restricted in all Top 50 markets except six (Cleveland, Phoenix, Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Raleigh and Greenville to be exact).  The restrictions will therefore directly impact our ability to serve customers in the most data hungry markets like NY, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore-DC, Philadelphia, Boston and Dallas."

T-Mobile’s Magenta Herring – Posted by Joan Marsh (AT&T)

Using Allnet Insights’ Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool we are able to evaluate AT&T’s low band spectrum ownership for all US Partial Economic Area (PEA) market.  For this evaluation, we want to see the markets where AT&T’s low band spectrum ownership is less than 45MHz.  This would be a PEA market where AT&T would not expect restrictions in the Broadband Incentive Auction (600MHz).

For the Top 50 markets we have the same markets that Joan Marsh indicated in her blog.   Also included in the screenshot is amount of low band spectrum that AT&T controls as well as its competitor’s spectrum holdings in the same markets.  It is interesting to note that Verizon would be restricted in each of these 6 markets, and T-Mobile only has low band spectrum in 1 of these markets.  In addition, we detail how the low band spectrum is divided between cellular spectrum and 700 MHz spectrum.

As we have demonstrated, our data provides similar results to AT&T’s analysis, but it also allows the other national wireless carriers (and over 600 smaller carriers) to be evaluated in the same manner. 

Allnet Insights’ Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool provides county-level spectrum depth and LTE channel configurations, as well as Partial Economic Area (PEA), Economic Area (EA), and Cellular Market Area (CMA) market level spectrum depth evaluations.

Increased Spectrum Depth - Top 100 Markets Tue, Feb 10, 2015

AWS-3 Auction Results - Spectrum Grid Mon, Feb 02, 2015