3.45GHz Auction Results Sat, Jan 15, 2022

On Friday, the FCC posted the results from Auction 110.  On Saturday we updated the January 2021 release of our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to reflect the auction results.  These results provide the most detailed view of each carrier's spectrum that can be deployed for 5G, particularly all of the available upper mid-band spectrum including EBS/BRS, 3.45GHz, CBRS, and C-band.

In the Spectrum Grid, we can see the channel allocations.  In general, Dish took the upper end of the band with T-Mobile and AT&T alternate having the lower parts of the band.  In many markets, AT&T is pinned in the middle of the band between T-Mobile, Grain, and Columbia Capital.  Each of the spectrum investors has selected spectrum assignments adjacent to AT&T's spectrum meaning they are each well positioned to sell to AT&T if the 3.45GHz spectrum cap is lifted. 

In the National Band Ownership slides we look at each carrier's ownership based upon the percent of MHz-POPs that they control.

For the 3.45GHz band, AT&T leads the way with 39% of the MHz-POPs, Dish has 30%, T-Mobile has 12%, and USCellular has 4%.  

Looking the the complete picture for Upper Mid-band spectrum, T-Mobile still leads with 34%, Verizon follows with 30%, then AT&T with 24%.  Dish has 9% of the upper mid-band MHz-POPs and USCellular has 2%.

2.5GHz Tribal Boundary Applications...Significant Progress Made Tue, Jan 11, 2022

In our December month-end review of open FCC transactions, we saw significant progress from the FCC in the processing the EBS tribal applications.  56 of the pending transactions were granted, reducing the remaining pending applications to 40. 

FCC Tribal Application Status

How much spectrum does Dish have for its Las Vegas network? Tue, Jan 04, 2022

Last month Light Reading re-published results from Signals Research Group's testing of Dish's first 5G network in Las Vegas.

Signals Research indicated that Dish is using 5MHz of their AWS-3 spectrum, 10MHz of their 600MHz spectrum, and 25MHz of their AWS-4. 

Initially I was curious whether Dish deployed all of their available spectrum so I utilized our Spectrum Survey Tool, which lists each channel block in a selected county along with the operating details for each channel including the current and future operator.  Dish's spectrum for Clark County, NV is displayed below.  The channel blocks that Signal Research Group indicates that Dish is operating are shaded green.  From my understanding of Signal Research Group's test results, Dish can still expand their Las Vegas network to include the 700MHz E block supplemental downlink channel, the A1/B1 AWS-3 uplink channel, the remainder of their AWS-4 spectrum and their CBRS spectrum.

To see this in terms of spectrum depth, below is an output from our Spectrum Depth Analysis module highlighting each of the national carriers' spectrum depth by category in Clark County.

Determining Unissued CBRS Licenses Tue, Dec 14, 2021

Earlier this month, the FCC announced that they finally released (granted) the CBRS PAL licenses won in Auction 105 by Cross Telephone Company.  I thought that this would be a good opportunity to show how the Transactions module in our Web Spectrum Viewer can be used to determine the status of pending transactions. 

As an introduction, our Transaction module includes all of the transactions affecting the mobile carrier and millimeter wave spectrum bands, going back to 2014.  We capture each of these transactions when they are posted on the FCC Daily Digest and update their status monthly until they are granted.

To find the unissued CBRS licenses, we set the filters to only include the CBRS spectrum transactions, for new licenses, that still have a pending FCC status.

After setting these filters, the results can be exported as an Excel file.

Finally, since the Transaction export includes a record for each license  that a carrier will receive, I am going to apply a pivot table in Excel, to summarize the 2857 matching records.  In the table below, you can see the bidding names for the companies that have not received their CBRS licenses and the count of their outstanding licenses.  Cross Telephone is still on this list, because the transactions list is updated monthly with the currently list indicating all of the transactions through the end of November.  The Cross Telephone licenses were granted on December 10, 2021 so they will be reflected in the January transaction file update.

Cogeco's Entrance into Canada's Mobile Market - Network Capabilities Tue, Nov 23, 2021

Lightreading recently posted an article about Cogeco's entrance into the Canadian mobile market places initially as a MVNO while building their own network.  To view Cogeco's we are going to present a couple of views of Cogeco's spectrum holdings from our current Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool (Canada).  

In Lightreading's article, Cogeco indicated that they purchased 3.5GHz spectrum licenses covering 91% of their broadband footprint.  Our licensed population analysis module provides an accounting for how much of the Canadian population can be reached with Cogeco's spectrum.  Cogeco owns spectrum in 2 additional spectrum bands (WCS and BRS) providing licenses over 0.1% of Canada's population and 15.4% respectively.  With their 3.5GHz spectrum, covering 91% of their broadband footprint only translates to roughly 30% of the Canadian population.

Cogeco Licensed Population by Frequency Band:

Frequency Band Ownership:

When we look at Frequency Band ownership for the 3.5GHz spectrum, Cogeco only controls 4% of the MHz-POPs in this band.  Clearly Bell Canada, Rogers, and Telus have large bandwidths in each market to enable faster 5G connections.

National Weighted Average Spectrum Depth:

When we look at the National Averages for spectrum depth, Cogeco only has 12MHz of upper mid band spectrum (WCS, BRS, and 3.5GHz) which is less than 10% of what the national carriers average.

The Latest on EBS (2.5GHz) Tribal Boundary Licenses Thu, Nov 04, 2021

It has been just over 6 months since we compiled the status of the tribal licenses that were filed by September 2, 2020.  It is important to see the FCC's progress in processing these applications due to their impact on the EBS Auction.  To reiterate, these tribal boundary applications have the first rights to the EBS whitespace areas but their rights are secondary to the existing licensee rights.  In our previous post, we included the EBS A1 license areas with the granted tribal areas, highlighting areas where tribes would not be able to claim access to the EBS A1 channel over the entirety of their filed tribal area.

FCC Tribal Application Status

EBS Spectrum Control Maps Mon, Nov 01, 2021

In our most recent blog post, we highlighted the challenges faced by T-Mobile in two markets where they don't control parts of the EBS spectrum (channels), that limit their deployment of large 5G channels across each urban market.  Where that post focused on the effects of owning or not owning a specific channel across a geography, the EBS Spectrum Control Maps below provide a more general look at the percent of EBS spectrum that T-Mobile owns, the FCC owns, and Other Carriers own.  To complete this analysis we used the MHz-POPs analysis from our EBS Auction Tool, combined with our analysis of T-Mobile's EBS MHz-POPs using the same geographic licensing database.  

While these maps provide insights on the EBS band in totality, the individual issues faced by T-Mobile in Orange County, CA don't strongly appear in these maps because they control all of the EBS channels except the G channels meaning they still control a high percentage of the EBS spectrum in Orange County.    For the Chicago market, the whitespace EBS challenges can be seen  with Lake County receiving a light green and McHenry receiving an orange.

Deficiencies of T-Mobile’s 2.5GHz Spectrum Tue, Oct 26, 2021

Recent discussions around the wireless industry have included opining on why T-Mobile acquired 40MHz of C-band spectrum when they control so much 2.5GHz spectrum.  Although the 2.5GHz spectrum is a valuable spectrum asset, there are two challenges to this spectrum that are not well understood by the industry and we believe that T-Mobile’s C-band purchases were a strategic purchase to provide a path to overcome these two spectrum licensing limitations.

License Areas Controlled by the FCC:

The first limitation is unlicensed or whitespace areas in core urban markets. To highlight these areas, we are going to start with some whitespace analysis that we have developed as part of our EBS Auction Tool.  In this analysis, the percentage of the population that is available in the whitespace area is indicated for each EBS channel in a county.  We have also calculated the percentage of the population that is contained with T-Mobile license area and the percentage of the population that is contained within the license area of any other carrier. In the image below we are showing the percentage of the population under T-Mobile’s control and under the FCC control (whitespace) for the entire 2.5GHz frequency band including both the EBS and BRS channels.  The color ranges start at 0% with red, 50% with yellow, and 100% with green.  In our initial analysis we will be focusing on the first auction channel (black box) in the six counties that make up the Chicago CMA market.  We prefer to use the CMA market structure to evaluate urban areas because they include only the most populated counties in each urban area.

2.5GHz Full-band Population Percentage View (Chicago):

2.5GHz – 1^st EBS Auction Channel Population Percentage View (Chicago):

           

In the top section of the chart above, it is apparent that T-Mobile controls all of the 1^st EBS Auction channel in Cook, DuPage, and Will counties but they only control all of the A1-A2-A3 channels in Kane County.  Fortunately, the parts of 1st EBS Auction channel that they don’t own will be available in the Auction 108.  The available whitespace is indicated in the lower half of the chart.  Looking at McHenry County, 100% of the C1-C2 channels will be available in the EBS Auction (108).

These charts highlights the percentage of the population available either for T-Mobile’s licenses or for the FCC’s whitespace.  Next we will look at the geographic constraints of T-Mobile’s licenses and the shape of each county’s whitespace area.  In the map below we are able to show the license areas for the A1-A2-A3 channels because the license areas of interest are identical.  It is apparent that T-Mobile has the rights to operate the A1-A2-A3 channels completely across the counties in the Chicago CMA except Lake and McHenry.

Licensing Map – A1-A2-A3 (Chicago):

Looking at the B1-B2-B3 & C3 channels, a whitespace area exists covering almost all of Kane County along with similar whitespace areas in McHenry and Lake counties.

Licensing Map – B1-B2-B3 & C3 (Chicago):

Our final map delineates the largest limitations to the areas that T-Mobile can deploy the C1-C2 channels in the Chicago CMA market.  Their base stations located in the gray areas of Kane, Lake, and McHenry counties cannot use the C1-C2 channels.  

Licensing Map – C1-C2 (Chicago):

Looking again at the T-Mobile’s control of the 1^st EBS auction channel we can highlight the deployment limitations that the whitespace area presents.  Since the 1^st Auction channel is 49.5MHz, this chart indicates that T-Mobile can deploy roughly a 50MHz channel on any sites in Cook, DuPage, and Will counties.  In Kane County they are limited to a 15MHz channel in the available 16.5MHz of spectrum.  To have a consistent deployment of a 50MHz channel across Chicago, they would need to purchase the whitespaces areas for each of these channels in each of the Chicago counties.

 

 

 

Looking again at the T-Mobile’s control of the 1^st EBS auction channel we can highlight the deployment limitations that the whitespace area presents.  Since the 1^st Auction channel is 49.5MHz, this chart indicates that T-Mobile can deploy roughly a 50MHz channel on any sites in Cook, DuPage, and Will counties.  In Kane County they are limited to a 15MHz channel in the available 16.5MHz of spectrum.  To have a consistent deployment of a 50MHz channel across Chicago, they would need to purchase the whitespaces areas for each of these channels in each of the Chicago counties.

The last perspective that we want to share on the Chicago market is the actual population in each of the whitespace areas for each county. Although we thought that 100% of the population was available for each channel in Cook County, the whitespace population table indicates that there is a very small population and small geographic area that is a whitespace within Cook County for the B1-B2-B3-C1-C2-C3 channels.

2.5GHz – 1^st EBS Auction Channel Population View - Whitespace (Chicago):

License Areas Controlled by Other Carriers:

The second limitation is spectrum blocks that are controlled by other carriers in core urban markets. To highlight these areas we are going to look at the four counties in the Los Angeles CMA market.  For the Population Percentage Chart below, we are including the population percentage for other carriers rather than the whitespace percentages.

2.5GHz Full-band Population Percentage View (Los Angeles):

2.5GHz – 3rd EBS Auction Channel Population Percentage View (Los Angeles):

In the Top View it is apparent that T-Mobile already controls the spectrum across all of the BRS channels (gray) in Los Angeles County but they are missing roughly 10% of the population for the G1-G2-G3 channels. In between the two BRS blocks of spectrum are the K guard band channels.  The ownership of these guard band channels mirrors the ownership of the primary channel e.g. G1=KG1.    The BRS channels and the EBS G1-G2-G3 channels total to 87MHz of spectrum, providing T-Mobile the ability to deploy an 80MHz NR channel throughout most of Los Angeles County.  Unfortunately in Orange County, another carrier owns 98% of the G1-G2-G3 channels limiting T-Mobile to a 10MHz channel in the first BRS block (F4-E4) and a 50MHz channel in the second BRS block  (BRS2-E123-F123-H123).  

Los Angeles CMA Counties:

In looking at the G1-G2-G3 licensing map, you can see that there are actually three licenses that T-Mobile does not control in the Los Angeles CMA Market.

Licensing Map – G1-G2-G3:

 2.5GHz – 3rd Auction Channel Population View – Other Carriers (Los Angeles):

 

The Other Carriers Population percentage view indicates the large licensed population that is controlled by other carriers and would need to be purchased by T-Mobile.

Conclusion:

With these two examples we have shown that missing 2.5GHz spectrum either due to it being unlicensed or being controlled by another carrier present challenges that likely limit T-Mobile’s largest 5G channel size to a subset of each urban market.  We believe that T-Mobile’s participation in the C-band and the current 3.45GHz auction was to “future” proof their ability to offer large channel sizes in the upper mid-band spectrum.  With either the C-band spectrum or the 3.45GHz spectrum, T-Mobile could use carrier aggregation to achieve 100MHz effective channel sizes even in areas where their 2.5GHz spectrum is more limited.

C-band Interim and Future Licenses Thu, Aug 12, 2021

On July 23rd, the FCC granted most of the C-band (Auction 107) licenses. This provided us the first opportunity to see how the FCC was going to handle the interim A block licenses that will transition into the permanent license on December 31, 2023.  The FCC provided call signs for each of the permanent licenses as well as call signs for each of AT&T's interim licenses.

These interim and future designations allow us to highlight a unique capability of our Web Spectrum Viewer and Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool.   For each block of spectrum we capture the spectrum licensee and the carrier that may lease the spectrum.  This information indicates the current operator.  Typically the current operator is the future operator, unless a pending transaction allocates that spectrum block to a different operator.  We are using this database capability to reflect the interim C-band licenses with the current operator field and the permanent operator with the future operator field.  You can see the AT&T interim allocations below as we are displaying the "Current" Spectrum Ownership Grid. 

Current View:

The future allocations are seen in the Future View below.

Future View:

Another way that this current and future ownership data can be seen is in our Spectrum Survey.    The Spectrum Survey provides the call sign, current operator, and future operator for all of the frequency bands in a selected county.  

Spectrum Survey:

Canadian 3.5GHz Auction Results and Consolidated Spectrum Ownership Tue, Aug 03, 2021

EBS Auction Update Webinars (Auction 108) Wed, Jul 14, 2021

Allnet Insights will be hosting EBS Auction Update Webinars throughout July.  The webinar will highlight how the existing license areas are determined and how the corresponding unlicensed areas (whitespaces) are calculated.  The update will also include an overview of the available licenses by county.  Below are the Webinar times.  Clicking a date will take you to a sign up page where you will receive the webinar link.  Your contact information will not be visible to the other webinar attendees.

EBS Auction Inventory Tue, Jun 15, 2021

On January 1, 2021 the FCC announced the license inventory for the EBS Whitespace Auction.  On May 17th, the FCC announced an extension to the Auction comment period due to a series of filings outlining issues with the initial inventory list and the complex process to calculate the whitespace license areas.

In this post, we will compare the auction inventory with our EBS Auction Tool and accompanying maps.

Below is the inventory data that the FCC provided for the 1st Auction Channel in  Douglas County, NV.  Douglas County is just south of Reno, NV.

This FCC data would lead a carrier to believe that a 49.5MHz channel covering 46,997 people could be purchased during Auction 108.  From the image below, Channel 1 is a composite of nine currently licensed channels.  To determine the number of people (POPS) that the 1st Channel covers, requires evaluating the licensed areas for each of these 9 sub channels.

Let's first look at the licensed area for the A1 channel surrounding Douglas County.  From the image below, only the southern point of Douglas County is not currently licensed, thus that area and its population would be available if a carrier purchased the 1st Auction channel for Douglas County. 

EBS A1 License Area:

The available whitespace for the A1 channel can be seen below from our Web Spectrum Viewer - EBS Auction subscription.

EBS A1 Whitespace Area:

Next we will look at the A2 channel which has a different license area than the A1 channel, thus a different (and larger) whitespace area.

EBS A2 License Area:

EBS A2 Whitespace Area:

Our last example will be the B2 channel which has the most whitespace area for any of the Douglas County sub channels.

EBS B2 Whitespace Area:

The geographic areas that can be purchased are important so you can visualize the areas that you can serve, but the population available in each of these whitespace areas is necessary to calculate the economic opportunity for each license, thus its value. 

Our EBS Auction Opportunities Tool calculates the population available in each of the whitespace areas for each auction channel.  The value on the far right of this table represents the total MHz-POPs available. 

Population View: 

The FCC's inventory indicates that there are 2,326,352 MHzPOPs for auction in this channel but there are on 344,398 MHzPOPs available, 15% of the FCC's value.

In the EBS Auction Opportunities Tool we also display the same data in a population percentage view, where the available population can be seen as a percentage of the county population.

Population % View: 

3.45GHz Operation Coordination Areas Tue, Jun 08, 2021

A Detailed View of 2.5GHz Spectrum in the United States Tue, May 18, 2021

Soon we should be hearing about the timing and procedures for Auction 108: 2.5GHz Band.  This auction is also been discussed as the EBS (Educational Broadcast Service) Whitespace auction since it is offering the unlicensed spectrum that was previously reserved for educational groups.  In the maps below, we are going to use the data from our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to highlight the current status of both 2.5GHz sub-bands; Educational Broadcast Service (EBS) and Broadband Radio Service (BRS).

The first map indicates the counties where T-Mobile has up to 80MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum and the counties where it exceeds 80MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum.  This cutoff highlights the markets where T-Mobile spectrum is limited to the BRS (owned) spectrum versus the markets where they have traditional leases to expand their spectrum resources into the EBS band.

The remaining maps are focused exclusively on the EBS spectrum band.  This second map highlights the counties where more than 50% of the EBS spectrum (measured in MHz-POPs) is controlled by the FCC and available in Auction 108.

Status Check on EBS Tribal Applications Mon, May 03, 2021

Today was the cutoff for comments on the EBS Whitespace Auction procedures, so let's take a look at the current status of the EBS Tribal applications, which have a priority on claiming EBS white space.  From the chart below, 44% of the applications are still in process.  Most concerning are the 83 applications that have been filed but have not seen any action by the FCC.  Typically applications are moved to a pending status within a few weeks but these applications have been on file since 3Q - 2020.

Below is a map of the granted tribal boundaries overlaid with the EBS A1 channel license areas.  Each of these tribal applications has requested access to the first EBS auction channel (49.5MHz).  Any tribal areas that extend into these license areas will not have access to the A1 channel (5.5MHz) in the overlap area.

Sub-6 GHz Spectrum Screen including 3.45GHz allocation Thu, Apr 08, 2021

3.45GHz Band Update Tue, Apr 06, 2021

The FCC announced the final rules for the new 3.45GHz band on March 19, 2021.  With our April 2021 release, we updated our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to include the 3.45GHz frequency band in each of the analysis modules.  The 10 - 10MHz channels appear in our Spectrum Grid as a part of NR Band 77.  In the image below, we highlight the FCC's ownership of each of the channels (pre-auction) by county.  

Honolulu County has a NA (Not Available) code for both the 3.45GHz spectrum and the C-band spectrum since neither band in available in Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.  Looking at the National Band Ownership Charts, we can see that this unavailability affects 2% of the MHz-POPs or 2% of the US Population (~6.6M).

In the County Analysis Module the spectrum depth values for eight selected carriers are displayed.  This image highlights each carriers 3.45GHz, CBRS, and C-band holdings.

Below is a more detailed description of our Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tools and the analysis capabilities it supports.

Viewing CBRS Licenses and Call Signs Mon, Mar 29, 2021

On March 15th, the FCC granted the first CBRS PAL licenses to 222 carriers.  In total the FCC issued nearly 17,500 PAL licenses in this initial group.  To view these licenses in our Web Spectrum Viewer, choose our Upper Mid-band (Up-Mid Band) in the band menu and chose the CBRS in the sub-band menu.

To find PAL licenses for specific markets, use our geographic filters.  To find call signs for the Dallas/Fort Worth market, chose CMA Name in the Region menu and start typing Dallas in the Regional Values menu.

In this view you can see the PAL licenses that each carrier controls for each county in the Dallas/Fort Worth CMA market.  From this view there are two ways to view the call sign for each license.  The first way is to click on the spectrum grid cell to reveal the call sign details for that cell.  The detail below is for the CBRS-A channel that Charter controls in Dallas county.

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

Mexico 3.5GHz Spectrum - Additional Reconfiguration Tue, Feb 02, 2021