(Illustration: Creativa Images, Sascha Segan)
The results are in. Verizon and AT&T just spent a metric ton of cash on C-Band spectrum, the tasty mid-band 5G that they’ve been missing up until now, with their combination of short-range high-band and slow low-band. Because unlike low-band, it allows wide enough channels for lots of traffic, but unlike high-band, travels more than 800 feet, mid-band is the most popular form of 5G in the world right now. Here in the US, though, only T-Mobile has had it up until now, because of some dumb decisions made by the FCC between 2016 and 2019.
The C-Band spectrum becomes available in two chunks, one at the end of 2021, and one at the end of 2023. Around the end of this year, I hope to see Verizon flip on its 60MHz of mid-band in a good chunk of the US, and AT&T to activate its 40MHz. That’s just the start. In 2024, it’ll ramp up to 160MHz for Verizon and 80MHz for AT&T (on average).
C-Band has the potential to cover cities and suburbs, and to offer multi-hundred-megabit speeds. T-Mobile is using 60MHz of mid-band 5G in my neighborhood right now, and that has contributed up to about 400Mbps in my tests. (Some testers have seen higher speeds; there’s a 655Mbps result from someone else in my inbox.)
The initial networks will only be available in 46 “partial economic areas” around major cities, but those areas are actually pretty broad; they include most of upstate New York, southern California, and Florida. An aggressive T-Mobile could still run way out ahead by simply putting mid-band 5G in places AT&T and Verizon aren’t allowed to touch yet.
There are some interesting results further down the chart, too. T-Mobile grabs a whole bunch of 40MHz blocks clearing in 2023. The carrier has a ton of 2.5GHz spectrum, more than it can use right now, but it was clearly just thinking about saving up for a rainy day.
I’d also like to call out the little guys: Horry Telephone Cooperative in Myrtle Beach, SC; Union Telephone in Rock Springs, WY; Carolina West Wireless in (guess where!) I’m fascinated by these tiny carriers’ ability to keep going in the shadow of the Big Three. I’ve half-wanted to write an article about these little guys for years; I wonder if anyone would read it. (Editors’ Note: I would.)
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Grain Management, a private capital firm bidding as NewLevel, and Canopy Spectrum, another private capital group, also bought a bunch of licenses. These companies almost always appear in auctions; they’re basically parasites, squirreling away spectrum until they can get a desperate carrier to pay more for it. But since their spectrum isn’t clearing until 2023, I’m not that worked up about it.
I want to push back against the dumb take that Verizon, a company that’s too big to fail, “can’t afford” this. At the level Verizon and AT&T operate at, money is notional; it’s a video game played in Excel. They’ll move some numbers around; somebody won’t get a dividend; something will happen with stonks. Verizon will probably use it as an excuse to raise prices, which is the actual concern.
There are some things I still really don’t understand here, that I’m hoping to have cleared up in the T-Mobile and Verizon analyst day presentations on March 10-11. Can the networks start building before the spectrum clears? Is all of the early spectrum going to clear at once, and if so, can we expect a big switch to be flipped on that day? They’ve got the airwaves; now it’s time to hear what they’re going to do with them.
What do you think about this? Let me know in the comments.
What else have I been thinking about this week?
- Mobile World Congress Shanghai went off without a hitch, unless you count “almost nobody could enter China who wasn’t already there” as a hitch. The GSMA is worried about a new Cold War leading to fragmenting wireless standards. For what it’s worth, I think MWC Barcelona will be canceled a few weeks before its late-June date, because of ongoing travel restrictions.
- T-Mobile used its mid-band spectrum to launch the only real 5G service plan in America, with no throttling and 4K video. I’m switching to it today.
- Verizon hasn’t forgotten about ultra-wideband. The carrier launched three more cities: Sacramento, Seattle, and Pensacola. As with other millimeter-wave rollouts, though, coverage can be best described as spotty.
- Apple is hiring 6G engineers. That’s a sign the company wants to be as relevant in 2030s wireless as it’s going to be in 2020s processors, or as it was in 2010s app platforms.
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