T-Mobile relinquishes mmWave spectrum ‘not feasible’ to deploy

T-Mobile has received the FCC’s permission to give up some millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum that the operator said “is not feasible to effectively deploy … in a way that would benefit the public.”

In a handful of locations around the country, T-Mobile told the FCC that it does not plan to expand its mmWave coverage beyond relatively small downtown areas. As a result, the operator is giving back to the FCC spectrum that sits well beyond its existing coverage areas. The FCC can make the spectrum available to another provider that might want it.

The move means that T-Mobile will not meet the FCC’s original coverage requirements for those spectrum licenses. Under the agency’s original buildout requirements, T-Mobile was supposed to provide mobile services to at least 40% of the population within the geographic boundaries of its mmWave spectrum licenses or up to 25% of the geographic areas of the licenses.

Failing to meet the FCC’s original coverage requirements could have been grounds for the agency to cancel T-Mobile’s licenses altogether.

But T-Mobile told the FCC it would be better if the company simply redrew its spectrum licenses around its existing, smaller coverage areas, and the agency agreed.

T-Mobile calls its new, smaller spectrum licenses its “Retained Areas.”

“Canceling T-Mobile’s entire license because it has not met the specified performance requirements throughout its originally licensed area – when service is being provided to the Retained Areas – would not facilitate the Commission’s goal of ensuring that the spectrum is being put to use. To the contrary, it would frustrate that goal because T-Mobile would be required to cease its operations in the Retained Areas,” T-Mobile told the FCC in a filing earlier this year. T-Mobile said that it’s “in the public interest for T-Mobile to retain its authorizations for the areas where it is providing service so that customers can continue to receive the robust level of communications that T-Mobile provides using the 28 GHz band.”

Some longtime spectrum observers questioned what kind of precedent T-Mobile’s move might set.

“It is an interesting tactic that I haven’t seen before. Would the FCC accept this methodology on lowband or midband spectrum licenses?” wondered Brian Goemmer, with spectrum-tracking company Spektrum Metrics.

Highband, mmWave spectrum is not nearly as valuable as midband or lowband spectrum. That’s because signals in mmWave spectrum can’t travel as far as signals in midband and lowband spectrum.

Thus, the FCC’s handling of the distinction could be important to players like Dish Network, the EchoStar company that has been struggling to expand its 5G network in order to meet the FCC’s lowband and midband spectrum license coverage requirements.

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