US mobile’s Big Three of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, along with SpaceX and EchoStar, were among the winning bidders of AWS-3 spectrum auction, according to results posted Friday by the FCC.
The FCC revealed those winners three days after announcing that the AWS-3 auction – essentially a reauction of EchoStar/Dish holdings – drew winning bids exceeding $3.5 billion over 72 rounds. That was enough to ensure EchoStar was not on the hook to pay a penalty to the FCC if total bids fell below the $2.9 billion threshold.
The strategies that the winning bidders will employ will vary by carrier and company, Roger Entner, analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, explained.
Bidding as Cellco Partnership, Verizon secured winning bids for licenses in 82 markets for a gross payment of $3.16 billion. Verizon effectively snapped up the big, highest-value licenses in major markets such as New York, Chicago and Boston. While those wins do not hand Verizon a national license, they do “add a meaningful amount of capacity,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in a research note (registration required).
T-Mobile, which had winning bids in 102 markets for a gross payment of $277.78 million, will provide the operator with a midband backbone throughout the rural US.
AT&T had winning bids for licenses in ten markets, totaling $120.77 million in gross payments. AT&T was “very selective and judicious” in its bidding, Entner said.
Bidding as Conundrum Wireless LLC, EchoStar came away with licenses in one market for a gross payment of $1.22 million. It’s not immediately clear what Charlie Ergen plans to do with that spectrum.
SpaceX intrigue
SpaceX notched winning bids in two markets for a gross payment of $8.49 million. That upstream spectrum is uplink-only and will likely be used to fill a gap from SpaceX’s EchoStar spectrum transaction.
More specifically, Tim Farrar, satellite analyst and president at TMF Associates, stated on X that he sees SpaceX’s newly-won AWS-3 spectrum being used to fill the gap in its Band 70 spectrum once SpaceX’s acquisition of EchoStar spectrum closes. SpaceX intends to use the EchoStar spectrum to support a next-gen direct-to-device offering.
But this could also signal bigger things for SpaceX’s terrestrial wireless strategy. “To me, this is another indicator that he [Musk] is probably going to build and bid aggressively on the upper C-band,” Entner said. “The big takeaway is that Elon is coming.”
The FCC has plans to complete an auction of upper C-band spectrum by July 2027.
SpaceX’s smallish AWS-3 wins arrive amid a Financial Times report holding that SpaceX has a keen interest in becoming a big player in the US terrestrial wireless market, rather than just a supplemental supplier of direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity. The report cites details SpaceX shared with investors that it is mulling the development of a retail Starlink product that could run on its own terrestrial network, a move that would put it in more direct competition with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
But it’s not clear if Starlink could pull that off without an MVNO agreement that the Big Three seem reluctant to grant. But, as Entner noted in Light Reading in May, SpaceX and Starlink are checking boxes that could lead to a bigger mobile play.
Farrar also tempered speculation about SpaceX’s terrestrial ambitions today in this blog post. “It’s always been expected that there will be some direct-to-consumer Starlink Mobile offering, most likely in the form of a smaller version of the Starlink Mini (a Starlink Nano?) operating in MSS frequencies with a much improved battery life, that you can connect to your phone via Bluetooth or WiFi,” he wrote. “That’s very different to offering a fully fledged mobile service, when satellite links won’t deliver the data rates and in-building penetration expected from a terrestrial network.”
SpaceX has not announced any such plans, and Elon Musk recently shot down the idea that a Starlink phone was in the works after the company obtained the Starlink Mobile trademark. That trademark is initially being used for Starlink’s D2D business.
Elsewhere in the AWS-3 auction, Blue Ridge Wireless and Citizens Band License Company also won a few licenses and markets.
The FCC said that 20% down payments on net winning bids are due July 13, and final payments are due July 27.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated with additional commentary from TMF Associates and MoffettNathanson, and has been corrected to note that the spectrum SpaceX won in the AWS-3 auction is upstream-only, so it won’t be used to underpin a possible terrestrial trial network.