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 prospects of millimeter (mmWave) 5G deployments have peaked the interest of mobile ecosystem players, investors included. While mmWave frequencies offer unmatched capacity, their coverage footprint lead to high network roll out and operating costs*. This raises questions on the financial viability of mmWave 5G. Vendors and suppliers continue to face tough decisions about supporting these frequency bands.… 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 »