5G Cellular Spectrum Auction—Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard

The Federal Communications Commission's very first cellular spectrum allocation was a messy affair. The U.S. was divided up into 120 cellular markets, with two licenses each, and in some cases, hundreds of bidders. By 1984, the FCC had switched over to a lottery system. Unsurprisingly, people gamed the system. The barriers to enter the lottery were low, and many of the 37,000 applications—yes, 37,000 applications—simply wanted to flip the spectrum for a profit if they won.

The FCC would soon move to an auction system. Overnight, the barrier to entry went from very low to very high. One observer noted that these auctions were not “for the weak of heart or those with shallow pockets.”

Cellular adoption grew at a pace no one could anticipate. In 1990 there were 12 million mobile subscriptions worldwide and no data services. Twenty-five years later, there were more than 7 billion subscriber accounts sending and receiving about 50 exabytes per day and accounting for something like four percent of global GDP.

Historically, cellular has occupied a chunk of the radio spectrum that had television transmissions on the one side and satellite use on the other. It should come as no surprise that to meet all that demand, our cellular systems have been muscling out their neighbors for some time.

The FCC is on the verge of yet another auction, to start on December 8. Some observers think this will be the last great auction, for at least a while. It’s for the lower portion of what’s called the C-band, which stretches from 3.7–4.2 gigahertz.

To sort out the who, what, when, why, and a bit of the how of this auction our guest today is Mark Gibson, Senior Director for Business Development and Spectrum Policy at CommScope, a North-Carolina-based manufacturer of cellular and other telecommunications equipment.