T-Mobile Spectrum Auction Win Helps It Solve 'Swiss Cheese' Network Problem

T-Mobile won the lion's share of spectrum licenses in the latest Federal Communications Commission auction, helping it fill rural network gaps that evoked comparisons to Swiss cheese. T-Mobile's winning bids totaled $304.3 million, letting it obtain 7,156 licenses out of 7,872 that were sold, the FCC announced yesterday. From a report: T-Mobile's licenses are spread across 2,724 counties (out of 3,143 total in the US). The second-highest bidder in dollar terms was PTI Pacifica, which spent $17.7 million on nine licenses in five counties. "With most of the available spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band located in rural areas, this auction provides vital spectrum resources to support wireless services in rural communities," the FCC said. The auction provided up to three blocks of spectrum, totaling 117.5MHz in each county. In terms of the number of licenses won, the second-place finisher was the North American Catholic Educational Programming Fund. Its winning bids totaled $7.8 million and cover 107 licenses in 84 counties. There were 63 winning bidders overall, and the auction raised $427.8 million. Small entities and rural service providers were given discounts on the license costs. The 2.5 GHz spectrum was originally set aside for educational institutions but has been repurposed for commercial service.

North American Catholic Educational Programming Fu

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck?

Re:

[BillTheKatt]

I wondered the same thing. The only thing I could think of is that perhaps they bid on this so that they could hold it and re-sell it to a carrier later for more money. Notice the section that says small entities and rural carriers were given a "discount" on their license costs.

So if you're a small rural school, buy some spectrum at a discount then lease it back to a carrier and make $$$.

Re:

[uncqual]

I had never heard of them. However, they are a non-profit which claims their mission and vision [nacepf.net] are:

MISSION
NACEPF’s broadband service, religious and educational programming, and advocacy efforts aim to support education at every level, from early childhood through adult education. As both an EBS advocate and practitioner, we work to increase the availability and deployment of broadband in support of lifelong learning.

VISION
NACEPF works toward a future where students of all ages and abilities have eq

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> I don't know about this organization, but Catholics in general don't have a problem with evolution. It is taught in many Catholic schools.

Eh, let him be - he's othering and hating and building a reputation.

There is hope for Nebraska now!

[jfdavis668]

to fill the biggest hole in the swiss cheese.

Re:

[Coius]

Oh god yes! It's hellish in Plattsmouth. Holy crap, if I even get 1 bar, it's a miracle. At home, I have to use WiFi to send and receive a text or phone call. This is appauling how bad T-Mobile is in this area. Even Omaha (Larger than our capital Lincoln) has spotty coverage, and that's a HUGE Metropolitan city. On the top of the hill at my parents, I get a whopping 3 bars. And keep in mind, that's not like it's even 30% signal. It's like 7% because of how the signal bars lie about signal strength.
Verizon

Re:

[bobby]

Wow, I'm so very sorry to hear about the person passing, and your attempt to help. I can't imagine dealing with that.

Last week I bought a signal booster. Basically, my older phone that was working on AT&T broke, so I bought newer phone. But it would barely connect, dropping out more than not. Not sure if AT&T reduced 4G signals, or changed antenna, or newer phone has worse RF system, or what. Can't find any specs on cell phone RF sensitivity or power.

Verizon is good here, but would cost me a bi

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Really?

[AvitarX]

I'm not even sure why they're using this spectrum for rural access.

Maybe the idea is for expanding internet access, since the frequency bump is more relevant for that and may be worth the range trade off.

Re:

[ksw_92]

Yeah, but this isn't AWS, its EBS. EBS, which used to be called ITFS, is a strange bird. It's been historically licensed by BTA, not by county. The actual licensed operating area is normally a circle but those can be chopped up by other nearby licenses (called "splitting the football"). So...you have lots of gores and snippets of unlicensed areas ("whitespace") in some of the larger counties thanks to the antiquated license scheme, which was developed when ITFS was a one-way broadcast medium. Some of these

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[ksw_92]

Yeah, sorry. I missed your point. The EBS band is good for intermediate-range outdoor coverage. It ain't going to cover large swaths of open range without special help. IMT 2020 in the 600MHz band is where you're going to get your best long distance cell coverage. T-Mobile has a pretty good inventory of "low band" licenses. During the merger they talked up their "layer cake" spectrum philosophy: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/... [t-mobile.com] (yeah, company PR but still relevant).

I don't think we're ever going to see cov

I'm still in one of those Swiss cheese bubbles

[Tony Isaac]

And I live in suburban Houston, in a subdivision composed of about 2,500 homes. I typically get 0 or 1 bars on my strength meter. I'm planning to switch, once I've identified a carrier that actually has good coverage here.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm planning to switch, once I've identified a carrier that actually has good coverage here.

That's the problem. I don't know if it's true elsewhere, but - here in the Puget Sound area, I've tried Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. For the most part their gaps in coverage seem to be in identical spots.

The only difference I've noticed is that, out in the far boonies, Verizon typically still has some low-quality coverage while the other two don't.

That sounds so cheap...

[ffkom]

... in comparison to the prices of the UMTS frequency auctions in Germany in 2000... are you old enough to remember? 6 wanna-be UMTS (aka "3G") mobile carriers back then paid a grand total of 49.2 Billion Euro just for frequencies [wikipedia.org]. In their delusion they thought that somehow, magically, every citizen would want to pay at least 5 times as much for UMTS instead of GSM (aka 2G to 2.5G, aka EDGE) based communication. Except that predictably never happened.

But now it's all Gouda...

[tomatoguy]

Cheesy, I know...