During 2019 and 2020, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile acquired 73% of the millimeter wave (mmWave) licenses offered in three FCC auctions. Their combined gross bids of $9 billion accounted for 88% of the total. Just a few years earlier, these incumbent operators had begun building their mmWave portfolios through acquisitions in the secondary market. That period marked the… Read More »
The decision by AT&T to host its network cloud, including the core network, on Microsoft Azure Cloud is the single most important milestone in the telecom industry over the past few years. It’s an experiment and a leap of faith that is set to have major ripples on the market. The core network is the essence of 5G… Read More »
In my earlier post, I outlined a few myths about 5G to avoid the cascading technology trap. Here, I like to extend the discussion and share a few data points on the cost of 5G networks. Over the past few months, our team has analyzed vendors’ roadmaps and product features, assessed spectrum and its cost, and developed deployment… Read More »
This past week saw Verizon overtaking AT&T in bidding for Straight Path Communications, owner of 28 and 39 GHz ‘5G’ spectrum, closing the contest at $3.1 Billion, more than double AT&T’s initial bid of $1.25 Billion ($1.6 B transaction value). The acquisition is framed within the context of spectrum for 5G services. What makes this an interesting case… Read More »
Auction 97 for the AWS-3 band made headline news as operators spent $44.9 billion on 65 MHz of spectrum – a huge sum of money. But what’s behind the headline story; what do the numbers tell? Here are some of observations:
It seems US wireless operators have crossed the bounds to the irrational in bidding on the AWS-3 spectrum. As I write this article, round 91 closed at over $43.74 billion for the 65 MHz of spectrum. That’s a gross average of $2.3/MHz PoP. To put this into perspective, the 90 MHz of AWS-1 spectrum in 2006 netted $13.7… Read More »
Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) spectrum is bustling with activity. With so many failed satellite service companies, it is no surprise that spectrum earmarked for such services be converted, or allowed to co-exist with profitable mobile services. Here, I like to summarize some of the developments surrounding MSS spectrum.
In the most recent deal, AT&T filed to acquire Nextwave’s WCS (Wireless Communication Services) and AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) assets for $650 million. The bulk of this deal is about the WCS band, so what is this deal about and what does AT&T get for the money?
When the WCS band was first auctioned off in 1997, 30 MHz of spectrum in 2.3 GHz was sold for $14.8 million. At the time, it seems reasonable to pay that much for spectrum with stringent regulatory requirements on RF out of band emissions to protect the adjacent satellite DARS band (Digital Audio Radio Service). Now, the picture… Read More »
On December 22, the FCC approved of AT&T’s purchase of the unpaired D and E blocks from Qualcomm for a total of $1.925 Billion. What went missing in most media reports that the D and E bands are unpaired 6 MHz bands in what’s commonly known as the “lower 700 MHz band.”