The US regulator raised USD4.6bn for the award of spectrum in the 3.5GHz band.
The first mid-band auction for 5G: On 25 August 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concluded its first 5G mid-band spectrum auction (Auction 105). The auction made available 70MHz of spectrum in the 3550–3650MHz range, for a total 22,631 Priority Access Licences (PALs) at county-level. Of these, 20,625 (i.e. more than 91%) were sold, generating a total USD4.86bn. The FCC will disclose the winners of the auction in the coming days. Bidders could not obtain more than four PALs per county, each of which is for a 10MHz channel for 10 years.
The spectrum will be used on a dynamic basis: A Spectrum Access System (SAS) will assign the specific channels for a particular licensee each time. Although a Priority Access Licensee may request a particular channel from an SAS, an SAS may dynamically reassign a PAL to a different channel to accommodate a higher priority Incumbent Access user. To the extent feasible, an SAS will assign geographically contiguous PALs held by the same licensee to the same channels in each geographic area, and assign multiple channels held by the same Priority Access Licensee to contiguous frequencies.
More to come later in the year: The FCC will assign more mid-band spectrum by the end of 2020, with the C-band auction (3.7GHz band) scheduled to begin on 8 December 2020.
