The FCC today announced the results of its recent 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum auction, and T-Mobile finished with a few of the Priority Access Licenses (PALs).
T-Mobile spent a total of $5.58 million on eight PALs in six counties. Also of note is that Shentel won a total of 262 PALs in 74 counties, spending $16.118 million for them. T-Mo is in the process of buying Shentel’s wireless assets, so those PALs could eventually become T-Mobile’s.
Verizon was the biggest spender in this CBRS auction, dropping a cool $1.89 billion on 557 PALs in 157 counties. Dish Network was a major player in the auction, too, participating as “Wetterhorn Wireless” and spending $912.93 million on 5,492 PALs. AT&T participated in the auction but did not win an PALs.
In total, the FCC auctioned off 70 megahertz of PALs in the 3550-3650MHz band. A total of 228 bidders won 20,625 of the 22,631 available licenses, and the gross proceeds from the auction totaled $4.58 billion.
You can find a full list of the bidders, the number of licenses they won, and their gross payments right here.
While none of the carriers are saying much yet about their mid-band spectrum winnings, we’re sure that Verizon is pleased to come away with a large haul of mid-band licenses that it can use to add to its current mmWave 5G coverage and the low-band 5G that it says is launching later this year. T-Mobile got quite a bit of mid-band spectrum as part of the Sprint merger, which explains why it came away with a smaller haul of licenses.
Source: FCC