T-Mobile US won 45 percent of all spectrum sold in the 600 MHz Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction, using the set-aside provisions that largely barred AT&T and Verizon from competing to buy those assets.
T-Mobile US won 31 MHz of nationwide capacity, on average, quadrupling T-Mobile’s low-band spectrum holdings. In many areas T-Mobile US won 50 MHz of spectrum.
Dish Network says it spent about $6.2 billion, about 31 percent of total spent in the auction. If Dish bid nationally, which is likely, it acquired an average of about 24 MHz of spectrum, assuming it paid about the same prices as did T-Mobile US.
Comcast says it spent $1.7 billion for spectrum of its own, but has not provided further details. If Comcast paid about the same as T-Mobile US (T-Mobile US spent about $ 8 billion), so it is conceivable Comcast won an average of about 6.5 MHz nationwide, if it wanted national coverage. That is probably not what Comcast did, however.
It would not have made sense to bid for anything less than 10 MHz blocks of spectrum, and the relatively limited number of total licenses won by Comcast suggests it bid regionally, and probably in areas that overlap with it fixed networks footprint.
Verizon did not bid at all and AT&T won less than $1 billion worth of licenses, indicating both carriers believe they have other options for capacity-oriented spectrum, and have less need of lower-band spectrum (600 MHz to 800 MHz).
The auction’s single-greatest impact is that T-Mobile US, which historically has operated using 2-GHz spectrum, now has largely erased the low-band spectrum gap with AT&T and Verizon, which means T-Mobile US will have better coverage in rural areas and better in-building coverage in urban areas.
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