Auction 102 concluded on May 28th raising $2 Billion for 2904 licenses for 700 MHz in 24 GHz (24.25–24.45; 24.75–25.25 GHz). [FCC]
AT&T and T-Mobile spent $982 million and $803 million for 831 and 1346 licenses, respectively.
Of the top 10 markets by price, Chicago is the most expensive on MHz-PoP basis as the graph below shows.
On a $/MHz-PoP basis, the 24 GHz spectrum is 17% lower than the 28 GHz spectrum in Auction 101.
Note: we had analyzed the business case for mmWave service in suburban area (link), which we continue to believe to be tricky. However, US operators are also embarking on mmWave deployment in urban areas as demonstrated by recent Verizon launches. This is different from the rest of the world where the C-band is common.
Note 2: we looked at the results of Auction 17 in 1998 and compared the inflation adjusted price to Auction 101 (28 GHz) and Auction 102 (24 GHz): 2.75x and 2.25x, respectively.