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AT&T Topped FCC Spectrum Auction, Followed by Dish
The FCC has released the results from the recent AWS-3 spectrum auction (pdf), and as analysts had guessed AT&T wound up acquiring the lion's share of spectrum. According to the FCC, AT&T spent $18.2 billion for 251 licenses, Verizon spent $10.4 billion for 181 licenses, and T-Mobile spent $1.8 billion for 151 licenses. Sprint didn't participate, as they're more interested in the broadcast spectrum being auctioned off next year. Also heavily in the bidding mix was Dish, the satellite provider spending $13.33 billion as the company continues to accumulate spectrum for a potential wireless play (or a very profitable sell off down the road).
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Boricua
Premium Member
join:2002-01-26
Sacramuerto

Boricua

Premium Member

WTF?!?

Why the frack is AT&T keep buying up spectrum instead of working on providing broadband to parts where they have coverage? There are parts of where I live at where they still haven't built out to, and we are in the 21st century .
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72

Member

Re: WTF?!?

All that spectrum is being collected to perform multicast streaming (sports, etc), and maybe some regional addition.

I'm assuming dish is up to the same thing, except they have no real cell sites in locations I'm not sure if they are bundling this up for someone to buy them out.

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

maartena

Premium Member

Re: WTF?!?

said by elefante72:

I'm assuming dish is up to the same thing, except they have no real cell sites in locations I'm not sure if they are bundling this up for someone to buy them out.

I am thinking Dish is seeing where TV will go in the future. The downside of a satellite dish is that you can't really provide any good on-demand service, as all of that is done via the internet with satellite providers. Both DirecTV and Dish have internet enabled on-demand services, but of course many satellite subscribers have satellite because there is no good earth based cable system in their area, and that often also means no good internet.

With Dish already having several international packages on streaming, an international sports package on streaming (BeIN, Universal Sports etc), and now launching their new Sling service, Dish is one of the first traditional providers realizing that distribution over the internet is going to be a major player in the years to come, and is starting to break with traditional "cable subscriptions" so to speak.

Them buying up wireless spectrum, and Dish having tested with Verizon LTE to see if they could offer a Dish/LTE combo, I am thinking they want to up it a notch and offer internet to customers that may be very happy with LTE based internet. They may be able to exclude Dish on-demand services from any data cap that those services may have (since LTE is heavily shared) and offer a compelling product to many areas with a poor wired services footprint.

I am thinking this is a smart move on Dish's side.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72

Member

Re: WTF?!?

I don't think for a second that Dish is going to create a land-based cell network from scratch, unless it is to sell back to the government (first responder networks). That would be immense cost and this spectrum is AWS3 which is 1700+ not really good for those hard to reach rural locations. In addition a lot of what they bought was unpaired spectrum (and uplink for that matter).

So assume no land-based network (not gonna happen) that leaves sensors (telematics ,IoT), two way for sat (purchases, auth) and backhaul or resell. So does he have IoT or telematics in the works? Who knows. Also regional-based multicast may be important for mobile applications. Uplink is only good for say adding 2-way for authentication or messages (IoT). Theoretically LTE-A can use either, but has that been approved by the FCC? There has to be some really big bets (or lobbying funds) in play here, and you know as well as I do these guys don't make bets with billions..

In any case all of these are huge cost undertakings and personally I think this is just buy it up a resell at a premium. Sure they can light up some backhaul in each region to get the requirement, will they. They haven't done jack with their current spectrum.

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

RARPSL to Boricua

Member

to Boricua
said by Boricua:

Why the frack is AT&T keep buying up spectrum instead of working on providing broadband to parts where they have coverage? There are parts of where I live at where they still haven't built out to, and we are in the 21st century .

It is called warehousing - IOW: Buying the spectrum solely for the purpose of keeping it out of the hands of other companies who would use it while not planning on using it themself.

Since the FCC is more interested in getting more money than blocking warehousing by having a "Use It or Lose It" (with a short milestone time period) AT&T can get away with this stunt of keeping the spectrum from being used. A Use It or Lose it policy might generate less funds from the auction initially even though once the "Lose It" period is over and the spectrum is repossessed (with no refund) and resold to the 2nd place bidder they will eventually get more money.

cralt
join:2011-01-07
CT

cralt

Member

Re: WTF?!?

The FCC has its own $pecial rules for these mega corps.

If you set up a AM/FM radio station you LICENSE the freq and you have requirements that say you have to be on the air and you have to be at your full licensed power. If you don't then you get your license yanked. You can't just license the whole dial and do nothing with it.

If you license VHF/UHF/7/8 freq's for your business or municipal service then you also have to renew it constantly. The FCC could roll up and "reband" you out at anytime.

But big money cellphone companies get to BUY and warehouse blocks forever with zero intention of doing anything with them and thats A-OK.

RFGuy_KCCO
join:2001-11-12
Niles, MI
Netgear CM2000
(Software) pfSense
Asus RT-AX86

RFGuy_KCCO

Member

Re: WTF?!?

said by cralt:

But big money cellphone companies get to BUY and warehouse blocks forever with zero intention of doing anything with them and thats A-OK.

This is incorrect. Purchased spectrum almost always comes with build-out requirements. I guarantee AT&T will be using this 10MHz contiguous block within 2-3 years (we need cell site hardware and devices that support this spectrum to be made and released first).
RFGuy_KCCO

RFGuy_KCCO to RARPSL

Member

to RARPSL
said by RARPSL:

It is called warehousing - IOW: Buying the spectrum solely for the purpose of keeping it out of the hands of other companies who would use it while not planning on using it themself.

Since the FCC is more interested in getting more money than blocking warehousing by having a "Use It or Lose It" (with a short milestone time period) AT&T can get away with this stunt of keeping the spectrum from being used. A Use It or Lose it policy might generate less funds from the auction initially even though once the "Lose It" period is over and the spectrum is repossessed (with no refund) and resold to the 2nd place bidder they will eventually get more money.

Your entire post is speculation. Just making that clear for other readers.

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

RARPSL

Member

Re: WTF?!?

said by RFGuy_KCCO:

said by RARPSL:

It is called warehousing - IOW: Buying the spectrum solely for the purpose of keeping it out of the hands of other companies who would use it while not planning on using it themself.

Since the FCC is more interested in getting more money than blocking warehousing by having a "Use It or Lose It" (with a short milestone time period) AT&T can get away with this stunt of keeping the spectrum from being used. A Use It or Lose it policy might generate less funds from the auction initially even though once the "Lose It" period is over and the spectrum is repossessed (with no refund) and resold to the 2nd place bidder they will eventually get more money.

Your entire post is speculation. Just making that clear for other readers.

Are you calling my opinion of why the FCC did not impose "Use It or Lose It" restrictions on the Auction speculation or my definition of Warehousing? The latter is the accepted definition of the act of getting spectrum but not using it (which has the result that other companies do not have the ability to use it themself).

I acknowledge that I am suggesting a motivation for the FCC's failure to impose this restriction since the result of that failure is to only collect the money without forcing the purchaser to use it (and thus keep it out of the hands of other companies). I suggest that if the restriction were in place there would be smaller bids since the funds would eventually be forfeited once the spectrum is left unused (thus reducing the investment value of the spectrum since it will eventually confiscated thus making it available again). While the later resale would make up for the initial shortfall there is the effect that there would be a delay in the spectrum getting used by the re-purchaser. The current rules encourage the purchase of spectrum you have no intent to use since it provides a way of blocking competition.

Since you seem to feel that the FCC has not imposed this restriction since its lack will increase the fees collected, what is your opinion of the reason for the failure. Or do you claim that the nonexistence of the restriction has no effect on the bids?

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

1 recommendation

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

I say the same of VZ, WTF.

$10.4 billion buys you a lot of FTTH.
Yet there are tons of CO's humming along without DSL even!

VZ claims it spent $24 billion building out FiOS as it is now. They could probably finish up most of their footprint with another $10 billion, now that materials cost is lower and they know how to throw up the new network quickly.

But no, more wireless spectrum. Your gonna need it to replace all that copper with LTE McAdam, actually what you have now even wont be enough even.

Funny thing is that investors will not be mad at all over this, they are fine with blowing $10 billion on something you cant even use right away, without spending even MORE money on deployment - labor, radios, testing.

Keeping Wireless and Wireline together is causing inherent conflicts of interest. What benefits one side of the company does not help the other.

I think Sprint played it smart this time around - they have gobs of spectrum. Dish confuses me, I think Charlie either wants to buy T-Mobile or just sell the licences for a profit down the road. If he was smart he would realize the money to be made by selectively deploying the spectrum holdings to underserved areas and offering a fixed broadband solution bundled with DBS TV.
mmay149q
Premium Member
join:2009-03-05
Dallas, TX

mmay149q

Premium Member

Re: I say the same of VZ, WTF.

said by Zenit_IIfx:

But no, more wireless spectrum. Your gonna need it to replace all that copper with LTE McAdam, actually what you have now even wont be enough even.

LMAO Yeah, to replace wireline options with shitty 30GB caps that can't even compete with 6Mbps DSL in terms of purely cap size, and on top of that once the 4G is in place how's that going to impact network performance once you start piling on customers? I can see customers in that region constantly calling in with complaints because their 4G operates slightly higher than 56k speeds..... I totally agree with you though, that $10 billion could of bought a lot of FTTH...

You know you'd think a company like VZ would WAN'T to put FTTH in as many houses as possible, in the hopes that having the most superior product compared to the cable and DSL/VDSL options it would be competing with wouldn't be able to even come close when it comes to upload speeds, imagine a commercial where they show one person at home uploading a 1GB file to dropbox using cable with it's 8Mbps (correct me if I'm wrong) upload speed, and then someone on FiOS doing the same with 100Mbps upload for example and having it done in less than 5 minutes....

There's all these ad's now with different industries talking about how "America's getting back to work" VZ could capitalize on that with their FiOS product and show it off with all kinds of stuff, hell

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· RhMdJqqI
this video ALONE if done more customer friendly and in a 30 sec - 1 minute commercial especially showing off moving that 2.3GB movie in 4 seconds done right with showing it being moved on 100Mbps in 3 minutes 27 seconds if both ends can utilize 100Mbps vs the other guy at 43 minutes and 10 seconds could really make an impact....

josephf
join:2009-04-26

josephf

Member

What is DISH's goal?

Start a new competitive wireless provider?

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

maartena

Premium Member

Re: What is DISH's goal?

said by josephf:

Start a new competitive wireless provider?

I don't think so. I am thinking they want to add LTE antenna's to their dishes (they have tested it with Verizon LTE for a while last year), and add bundled internet services to customers that are out of wired internet services footprints. They may use these frequencies to specifically cover traditionally "badly covered" areas, they probably won't use these frequencies to compete in big cities with wireless.

Personally I think Dish is one of the few traditional providers that is seeing that the direction television is going to more and more on-demand. Terrestrial cable providers are already ideally suited to step in to on-demand over IP at this moment, but don't need to because they can combine services easily for many years until the market says otherwise. Satellite providers currently really have only one way to supply television, and with the market going more on-demand in the last year and this year with all the individual streaming packages to be launched, it may be a very smart move of Dish to step in to that market. They already have solid experience streaming with their international channel packages they already offer over the internet, and that same technology is now being used for their new Sling service.

I'm sensing Dish is making a smart move here and offering LTE where it is needed most, and offering it as a bundle deal with Dish satellite.

cralt
join:2011-01-07
CT

cralt

Member

blocking

DiSH might do something with the new freq's but ATT & VZN are just buying it up to block others.
silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA

silbaco

Premium Member

Re: blocking

Verizon has actually been pretty good about using their spectrum. One could argue better than anyone else actually. At&t has tons of unused AWS and WCS. T-Mobile and Sprint both own tons of spectrum in places they don't even service. Even in places they have deployed Sprint has tons of unused high band spectrum. Verizon has deployed or sold nearly everything.

RFGuy_KCCO
join:2001-11-12
Niles, MI

RFGuy_KCCO

Member

Re: blocking

WCS has no hardware or mobile devices that support it yet, so how could AT&T deploy this spectrum now? Support for WCS is coming, but it isn't here quite yet. Once it is, I am sure AT&T will use that spectrum.
RFGuy_KCCO

RFGuy_KCCO to cralt

Member

to cralt
said by cralt:

DiSH might do something with the new freq's but ATT & VZN are just buying it up to block others.

Pure speculation on your part. Just clarifying for other readers.

Also, what has Dish done with all the spectrum they already own? (here, I'll help you out: nothing, they are squatting on it).