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In our September 2018 Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, we have incorporated the FCC's re-licensing of the 39GHz into the new Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service. In making this change the FCC issued new call signs and leases for all of the 50 x 50 MHz channels. The call signs have been reissued on a Partial Economic Area (PEA) market frame work. Previously these licenses were issued on a Economic Area (EA) basis. The original channels were lettered A through N. Now they are numbered 1-14 with the A designation for the uplink channel and the B designation for the downlink channel.
The FCC reissued this spectrum with a different call sign and channel number for each of the original channel blocks. Issuing a separate call signs will make it easier to combine the 2-50MHz blocks into 1 -100MHz block as indicated in the Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking below.
See Reducing Encumbrances in the 39 GHz Band
For example from the chart below, the 1-A and 1-B channel for Butts County, GA.
Old Records:
Market: BEA040 - Atlanta, GA-AL-NC
Call Sign: WPQV559
Channel A
New Records:
Market: PEA011 - Atlanta, GA
Channel: 1-A
Call Sign: WRBI208
Channel: 1-B
Call Sign: WRBI209
The mapping of original call sign / channel to the new call sign / channel is available in our Web Spectrum Viewer, Transactions Menu.
With our September 2018 release of the Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, we have added a FCC Spectrum Screen analysis to the County Analysis Module and the CMA Market Analysis Module. With respect to the T-Mobile and Sprint merger announcement, the Spectrum Screen analysis will provide you with a composite look at the T-Mobile/Sprint spectrum assets across the Mobile Carrier frequency bands (600MHz-2.5GHz).
Following the FCC Spectrum Screen Definitions our Spectrum Screen analysis does not include the WCS guard band or the BRS1 channel which are included in our 'normal' spectrum depth totals. In addition, the Spectrum Screen only includes 70% of the EBS spectrum holdings.
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.
On April 19th, the FCC opened a docket to collect comments related to "Transforming the 2.5 GHz Band". As background, the US 2.5GHz spectrum band encompasses 33 channels. 20 channels (A, B, C, D, and G groups) are designated for Educational Broadcast Service (EBS) and 13 (BRS1/2, E, F, and H) are designated for Broadband Radio Service (BRS).
License Area:
Sprint owns a vast majority of the BRS licenses and leases a vast majority of the EBS licenses. The licensing limitations for this spectrum are drawn from its origins providing broadcast video services. The original licenses were formed as 35 mile radius circles centered on the video transmitting site. When two licenses overlapped, a football shaped area would be formed. A line would be drawn through the end points of the "football" splitting the overlapping license area between the two licensees. BRS licenses include both 35 mile radius licenses, geographic area licenses (entire BTA) and Entire BTA license with cutouts for existing 35 mile radius licenses.
In 2009, a Broadband Radio Service auction (Auction 86) included the remaining unlicensed areas within each BTA for the BRS channels, but the unlicensed area in each BTA for the EBS channels was not auctioned.
Channel Plan Transition:
Prior to this point, Clearwire was launching pre-WiMax networks on the EBS/BRS pre-transition band plan which was designed around video operation. As you can see in the Pre-Transition chart below, the A channels (A1, A2, A3, and A4) are separated by the B channels (B1, B2, B3, and B4). This allowed all of the A channels to be broadcast at a video site without interference. Clearwire would need to control both sets of the "interleaved" channels to have enough contiguous spectrum to launch their RAN network in a market.
To facilitate data network deployments and to protect the remaining video operations the FCC provided a way to transistion licenses to the Post-Transition band plan on a BTA market basis. If there was a significant commercial video operation in a market, that BTA market was able waived from transition and it stayed with the Pre-Transition band plan. The Post-Transition band plan put the remaining video operators into the mid-band segment (A4, B4, C4, D4, G4, F4, and E4) and provides contiguous spectrum (16.5MHz) for the rest of the channel group (e.g. A1, A2, and A3)
FCC Request for Comments:
License Area:
The FCC has expressed a desire to make the EBS unlicensed area available for use. The FCC has asked whether the expansion of the licenses should include the entirety of the census tracks that license (35 mile) intersects or the entire county that the license intersects. The map below from the National EBS Association (NEBSA) illustrates the counties that would be added to each intersecting EBS license for the A1 channel. For the carriers that already lease these licenses, they would have the opportunity to deploy sites on the larger license area and would likely also pay the licensee a higher monthly payment due to the increase in licensed population. As you can also note below, this approach still leaves all of the white counties unlicensed.
The FCC would like to license the white counties in a 4 step manner:
Service Rules:
The FCC is also proposing to change the service rules for the EBS spectrum to allow the spectrum to be sold to commercial operators rather than requiring leases.
Remaining Pre-transition Markets:
The FCC is also proposing to complete transitioning the remaining pre-transition markets so a consistent band plan would be in use nationwide. A few wireless cable operators had received waivers but most of those operators have ceased operations. This will clear interference issues between markets and facilitate the deployment of data in the Lower Band Segment (A,B,C, and D groups) and the Upper Band Segment (E,F,G, and H groups). Video operations will continue in the Mid Band Segment (A4, B4, C4, D4,G4,F4, and E4) in the markets where they operate today.
In our last post we were discussing the next steps for the US millimeter wave spectrum after FiberTower and the FCC settled FiberTower's licensing issues. As we prepare for a 28GHz auction in November, and a 24GHz auction early next year, let's take a look at how each of the new millimeter wave frequency bands are configured. Each of these images is taken from our updated Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool which is now reflecting the new channel band plans for 24GHz, 37GHz, and 47GHz.
24 GHz Spectrum:
In this view we show both the expanded 24GHz band configuration and the old 24GHz configuration. All of the spectrum depth values are calculated from the New 24GHz data. We have left the old 24GHz configuration, so you can continue to see the remaining 24GHz spectrum licenses which will need to be moved over to the New 24GHz by the FCC. The current licenses are licensed for a 40MHz uplink and 40MHz downlink which won't map properly to the new band plan.
37GHz Spectrum:
For the 37/39GHz bands we show the new 37GHz band alongside the reconfigured 39GHz band. The new 39GHz columns are not populated because the existing spectrum holders will need to be transitioned to the larger/unpaired channels in the new 39GHz plan. We are providing spectrum depth values for the new 37GHz spectrum and the old 39GHz spectrum.
47GHz Spectrum:
We have added the new 47GHz band configurations to the Spectrum Grid and each of the spectrum depth modules.
PEA Market Analysis:
Our last addition, is a PEA Market Analysis module. This module displays spectrum depths for each selected carrier using the new FCC Auction market structure. For the 28GHz auction, you can see the amount of spectrum that will be available in each of the PEAs in the LMDS A (FCC) column on the far right of the chart.
| Purpose | Assignee | Assignor | Call Sign | Partition | Radio Service | Market | Channel Block |
| Assignment | Cross Telephone | T-Mobile | WPOL282 | Map | PCS | BTA443 - Texarkana, TX/AR | C |
| Assignment | Cross Telephone | T-Mobile | WQVP438 | Map | AWS-3 | CMA598 - Oklahoma 3 - Grant | G |
| Assignment | Cross Telephone | T-Mobile | WQVP443 | Map | AWS-3 | CMA658 - Texas 7 - Fannin | G |
| Assignment | Appalachian Wireless | Cumberland Cellular | WRAM732 | Map | 600MHz | PEA096 - Richmond, KY | A |
| Assignment | T-Mobile | Cross Telephone | WQTC206 | Map | AWS-1 | REA004 - Mississippi Valley | F |
| Lease | Sprint | SOUTH SUBURBAN COLLEGE | WLX940 | Map | EBS | P00362 - P35 GSA,41-36-17.1 N,87-37-16.2 W | B1234 |
| Lease | Sprint | Triton College | WHM934 | Map | EBS | P02406 - P35 GSA,41-52-44.1 N,87-38-10.2 W | B1234 |
| Lease | Sprint | BEASLEY MEDIA GROUP | WMI898 | Map | BRS | P02039 - P35 GSA,35-12-34.3 N,85-16-38.9 W | F1234 |
| Lease | Gold Star Communications | Silver Star Telephone | KNLG221 | Map | PCS | BTA381 - Rock Springs, WY | F |
| Lease | Gold Star Communications | Silver Star Telephone | WQGV749 | Map | AWS | CMA720 - Wyoming 3 - Lincoln | A |
| Lease | Gold Star Communications | Silver Star Telephone | WQVT393 | Map | PCS | BTA381 - Rock Springs, WY | E |
| Lease | Gold Star Communications | Silver Star Telephone | WQXK484 | Map | PCS | BTA353 - Pocatello, ID | C |
Things are beginning to clear up now that we have the settlement between FiberTower and the FCC, which eliminated an average of 121 MHz of 24GHz spectrum that FiberTower could have provided to AT&T but FiberTower did provide AT&T most of the active and terminated licenses they wanted in the 39GHz band.
With Chairman Pai's comments at MWC 2018, it is clear that the FCC is targeting a 28-31GHz auction by the end of the year. This makes the most sense, since the ownership of the LMDS band is more "clean" than the 39GHz. Looking at the CMA Market Analysis from our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool we can see that most of the spectrum that is in the FCC's hands is the LMDS B block (31,000 to 31,075MHz) and (31,225 to 31,300MHz). It appears that 150MHz of spectrum will be available in 23 of the Top 75 CMA markets. In addition, LMDS A block spectrum (1150Mz) will be available in 15 of the Top 100 CMA markets.
Chairman Pai's comment that 24GHz will be the second auction, also makes sense because the settlement with FiberTower cleared the 24GHz band except in a few western markets including parts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and California. This spectrum is currently licensed as 2 - 40MHz channels so these channels don't match up to the new band plan for 100 MHz channels.
It is unknown when the FCC will be able to auction the new 37GHz band with the remaining spectrum held in the 39GHz band. Below is a county-level view of the ownership of this band from the Spectrum Grid Module in our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool. You can see the spectrum blocks controlled by the FCC in grey along with the spectrum that Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile each control. These channel allocations need to be shifted so that carriers own 200MHz contiguous blocks to match the new 37/39GHz band plan.
Looking at this same counties in our County Analysis module for Spectrum Depth, you can see that each carriers allotments aren't always in 200MHz increments which are the channel sizes for the new combined 37/39GHz. The carriers will have to figure out a plan to shift their holdings into 200MHz channels and the FCC will have to deal with fractional channel blocks and fractional counties, since the 39GHz licenses include rectangular licenses that overlap county boundaries.
Allnet Insights & Analytics has launched a blog capturing all of the FCC Announcements that relate to the frequency bands that we cover in our Mobile Carrier and Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tools along with announcements that relate to siting, spectrum caps, and any proceedings that would interest the wireless carrier industry.
The blog provides easy, searchable access to Notice for Proposed Rule-makings, auctioned spectrum proceedings and grants, as well as transfer of control announcements. Many times these notices are difficult to find within the FCC document system.
The blog is available from the primary menu of our home page or the direct link below.
There are two ways to find specific announcements. First, you can select Tags for the carrier, spectrum band, auction, or activity.
Second, you can utilize the search field in the bar above our menus. This field searches are entire web site, including our Spectrum Blog, FCC Announcements Blog, as well as our Products pages. In the search below, Key Bridge is found in the FCC Announcements blog as a database provider for the 70/80/90 GHz registration system.
With T-Mobile's earnings release today, they indicated 3 significant spectrum transactions without identifying either the transaction partners or the markets. Below we have compiled a transaction listing from our Web Spectrum Viewer that details the March 2017 transaction with AT&T, the September 2017 transaction with AT&T, and the pending October 2017 transaction with Verizon. Allnet Insights' Web Spectrum Viewer enables the user to display all of the details for each of these transactions including whether the entire license is being assigned or only certain frequencies for certain counties.
In the images below, AT&T transactions are highlighted in orange, Verizon transactions are highlighted in red, and USCellular transactions are highlighted in blue. Transactions with other carriers or spectrum holder are not color-coded.
With the September 2017 release of our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, we have also added the ability to visualize and track the 600MHz reserved spectrum by county or by market.
In our Spectrum Grid default view, you are able to visualize which spectrum blocks are designated as reserved for the counties in each of the most populated Cellular Market Area (CMA) markets.
To display the reserved spectrum for all of the counties within a Partial Economic Area (PEA) market, you can sort the county data using the PEA # column.
With the September 2017 release of our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, we have added three new charts that provide insights into the US Population that each carrier can serve with each channel in their wireless spectrum portfolio, each frequency band, and each band classification.
Licensed POPs by Channel:
With our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, you can analyze over 1900 carriers and spectrum holders in a similar fashion to our Dish analysis. In the chart below, we examine the population that Dish could serve with each of the channels in their license portfolio. For example, Dish's 700MHz E Block spectrum reaches nearly 250 million people while their AWS3 A1 Block reaches 300 million people.
Licensed POPs by Frequency Band:
This chart shows the cumulative population that can be served by all of a carrier's channels in a frequency band. Where the Licensed POPs by channel chart shows the population served by each of Dish's 600MHz channels; none of which serve more than 200 million people; with Dish's overall 600MHz spectrum, they can reach nearly the total 322 million US population.
Licensed POPs by Band Classification:
This chart shows the cumulative population that can be served by all of a carrier's low-band, mid-band, or high-band spectrum. This is an important perspective when you consider low-band spectrum being a traditional coverage layer with mid-band spectrum being traditionally a capacity layer. Dish's current spectrum portfolio provides them with the ability to serve the entire US population both with coverage spectrum and capacity spectrum.
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.
Today, T-Mobile announced further details on the deployment plans for their 600MHz spectrum. Let's review what we indicated back in April.
The green areas are the areas that we expected T-Mobile to deploy a 5x5 LTE channel using their 600MHz spectrum. Let's check these areas with the press release:
Central Pennsylvania appears to be our only miss in this T-Mobile list. It is strange that T-Mobile is emphasizing a 600MHz deployment in an area they already control the 700MHz -A Block spectrum.
As more states have have announced that they have agreed to opt-in for a nationwide public-safety broadband network that will be built and operated by AT&T, we are going to look at Spektrum Metrics Insights' tools to see several ways that the effects of these opt-ins can both be seen and analyzed. All of our products are updated monthly to reflect the continuous change in the US licensed spectrum landscape.
The first view is the county by county view in the Web Spectrum Viewer. In the screen shot below, we are looking at the current owners of the public-safety spectrum (the right 2 columns) which highlight the counties/states where Firstnet (FSN) is still the assigned current owner. In this view, you can see the New Jersey counties in the New York CMA, the New Jersey counties in the Philadelphia CMA, and the Michigan counties in the Detroit CMA; are all opting in for an AT&T operated network.
Selecting one of the county_channel cells coded with FSN (Bronx county, NY) will reveal a detailed view of a non-opt-in county. FirstNet is still licensed for that channel, and the current operator, but AT&T is still expected to be the future operator.
An AT&T coded cell (Somerset county, NJ) will reveal a detailed view of a opt-in county. AT&T is indicated as the licensee, as well as the current and future operator of that channel.
Last, we are going to use the Channel Licensed POPs module from the Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to determine how much of the US Population is locked in with AT&T operating the FirstNet spectrum.
Looking under the column for PSBB (Public Safety Broadband), you can see that with the existing 6 states that have opted-in, AT&T controls the FirstNet spectrum over a population of 42 million or roughly 13% of the US population (322 million total). You can also see the population percentages that AT&T can reach with each of the other 700 MHz channels that they own or lease across the country.
Yesterday Allnet Insights & Analytics presented at the Wells Fargo 5G forum. Below are several of the slides that describe the millimeter wave spectrum holdings for each of the parties involved in the current millimeter wave deals. Each of these slides is a direct analysis output from our Millimeter Wave - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool. In these slides we have selected 8 carriers from the 173 carriers available in the tool. The first slide compares the National Weighted Average spectrum depth for each of the carriers. Verizon's spectrum position is displayed as NextLink Wireless since Verizon at the time this slide was created was only leasing NextLink's spectrum. In this set of slides we also highlight the risk surrounding the FiberTower transaction for AT&T. The largest portion of the FiberTower transaction is for licenses that the FCC has terminated. It is unknown how many of these licenses will be restored and added to AT&T's spectrum holdings.
While the National Average slide highlights how much spectrum each carrier has on average across the county, networks are deployed using the available spectrum within a market. The slides below highlight the amount of spectrum that each carrier has in a CMA (Cellular Market Area). The Top 5 markets are in the first slide including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Houston.
The remaining Top 10 markets are in the second slide: Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Detroit, Atlanta, and Boston.
The last slide highlights the estimated MHz-POPs for each of the carriers for their Millimeter Wave spectrum. It is worth noting that the ranges for Mobile Carrier spectrum (600MHz-2.5GHz) for the National Carriers is 30B MHz-POPs to 65B MHz-POPs. On this chart, the lowest range is 50B MHz-POPs.
Allnet Insights' spectrum tools have historically only focused on spectrum licenses that are active or pending. As we compared the size of the FiberTower/AT&T transaction using our active license data, it was clear that FiberTower's terminated licenses make up a large percentage of the transaction. To allow our customers to evaluate the FiberTower transaction in terms of the nationwide scope and market by market effect, we have added the FiberTower terminated licenses to our FCC data set. Since it is not clear how many of the terminated licenses will actually be reinstated, we have not included the terminated licenses in our current or future holdings data until they are formally restored by the FCC.
Below we show FiberTower's active licenses compared to their terminated licenses in our Spectrum Grid for the 24 GHz band. FiberTower's active licenses use the FBT carrier code while the terminated licenses use the FTT carrier code. In this view FiberTower's active licenses only include the Chicago CMA counties while the terminated licenses cover Los Angeles county and all of the Philadelphia counties.
Looking at the 39GHz spectrum blocks, FiberTower's terminated licenses cover the A block channel for all of the New York counties and the H block for all of the New York counties that AT&T doesn't currently control.
One of the important aspect to understand about the millimeter band spectrum is the different types of licenses that compromise the 39 GHz Band. One block of licenses were auctioned with Economic Area boundaries (similar to the AWS-3 Auction for H, I, and J licenses). The second block of licenses are referred to as "Rectangular Licenses". The rectangular licenses are defined by 4 latitude/longitude points making a rectangle. These licenses include 1 or more of the 39 GHz channels and the rectangles encroach on the Economic Area licenses in quite a few of the US major metro areas. Essentially the rectangular area licenses subtract license area and population from the Economic Area licenses.
Below is a map which reflects the active and terminated rectangular area licenses. The terminated licenses (in red) represent some of the licenses that AT&T and FiberTower are attempting to restore. The are also trying to restore a most of the 24 GHz licenses that FiberTowerhad terminated by the FCC. Straight Path's consent agreement with the FCC required them to cancel all of their rectangular licenses so those are not included in the map.
Cancelling the Straight Path licenses accomplished two purposes. First, it penalized Straight Path for lax controls on their construction and substantial service process. Second, it cleaned up the licensing boundaries for the spectrum the FCC still controls enabling the FCC to auction complete counties for more 39 GHz channels.
For this blog post, I am going to use Allnet Insights' Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to estimate the 600 MHz spectrum that T-Mobile will use to deploy LTE and what will remain available to deploy 5G.
To start this analysis, I will get T-Mobile 600 MHz and 700 MHz spectrum holdings at a county-level from the Company Analysis Module.
Using this data, we assign 10 MHz of 600 MHz spectrum to all counties where T-Mobile doesn't control 700 MHz spectrum. This spectrum assignment would provide T-Mobile with similar LTE capacity across the United States. Note that there are a few counties where T-Mobile controls enough 700 MHz spectrum to enable a 10x10 LTE channel.
The remaining 600 MHz spectrum is expected to be deployed as a 5G technology. For the map below, i have indicated 5G channel sizes that are similar to LTE channel sizes except for a 25 MHz channel size which doesn't exist in the LTE framework. This is in markets where T-Mobile controls 50 MHz of spectrum above the 5 MHz channel LTE network.
We have released a mid-month update to our Mobile Carrier - Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool, to include the results of the 600MHz Auction. The FCC announced the auction winners on 4/13. Below is a screen shot of our Spectrum Grid reflecting the channel winners and the new 3GPP band class (71) that is already in the standardization process.
Next is an updated National Weighted Average Chart reflecting the average spectrum depth (population weighted average) for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Dish, USCellular, Comcast, and the FCC. Looking at the low band spectrum summaries, T-Mobile clearly closed the gap on low band spectrum going from a national weighted average of about 8 to 41 MHz.
The image below comes from our County - Spectrum Depth analysis module, depicting the same 8 carriers spectrum depth for the counties in the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago CMA markets. This module also details the spectrum holdings in each of these counties by frequency band.
To purchase Allnet Insights products that include the 600MHz auction results use the links below:
Mobile Carrier Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool - $4495
Evaluate all 1900 wireless carriers and spectrum holdings using all of our spectrum depth and LTE channel analysis modules.
Custom Spectrum Depth Report - $1995
Evaluate 8 carriers spectrum depth either by county or by market (CMA, PEA, or EA). Our suggested 8 carriers are Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, USCellular, Dish, Comcast and FCC
National Carriers Spectrum Depth Top 100 CMA Markets - $495
Evaluate 6 carriers spectrum depth by CMA market. This is a standardized monthly report that Allnet Insights provides every month. The included carriers are Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, USCellular, and Dish
