Would utilities have interest in T-Mobile’s 800MHz auction?

T-Mobile officials said the company will finish auctioning a chunk of nationwide 800MHz spectrum sometime this fall. But there may not be much demand for that kind of spectrum.

“I have a hard time seeing who else would necessarily step up,” Brian Goemmer, with spectrum-tracking company Spektrum Metrics, told Light Reading.

Other industry executives, who asked to remain anonymous, agreed.

Goemmer said that the obvious candidates to purchase T-Mobile’s 800MHz spectrum – Verizon and AT&T – likely would have to buy and install new radios into their networks in order to begin using it. That would probably involve billions of dollars in infrastructure and installment costs and likely wouldn’t be worth the slight boost in coverage that T-Mobile’s 13.5MHz chunk of 800MHz spectrum would provide. Moreover, AT&T and Verizon have both signaled a desire to reduce spending on their respective wireless networks.

Cable companies Comcast and Charter Communications aren’t likely buyers either. They’ve slow-walked the deployment of their 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum holdings, and Comcast has signaled an interest in selling its 600MHz spectrum.

A dark horse like Amazon or Starlink could emerge. But that hasn’t happened in past FCC auctions, and there’s no clear reason why things would change when Amazon has already begun building a nationwide IoT network called Sidewalk in a sliver of the unlicensed 900MHz band.

One potential buyer mentioned by several executives: utilities. Indeed, T-Mobile has already identified engineering giant Burns & McDonnell as a potential buyer of its 800MHz holdings.

In a court filing last year, Burns & McDonnell said it “plans to unlock consumer choice by making spectrum available to those in need, such as regional carriers and Internet providers (particularly in underserved and unserved areas), in addition to working with partners to modernize our aging [utility] infrastructure and enable private networks for utilities so they can offer enhanced services to their customers.”

However, it’s not clear whether Burns & McDonnell will cough up the $3.6 billion opening bid T-Mobile is placing on the auction. That’s the price Dish Network says it now cannot afford.

Dish purchase unlikely

The story of T-Mobile’s 800MHz auction starts with its purchase of Sprint, which closed in 2020. To get that deal approved, the company inked a complex agreement with Dish Network that regulators hoped would position Dish to take the place of Sprint as a fourth nationwide wireless network operator in the US. As part of that agreement, T-Mobile agreed to give Dish roughly three years to purchase its unwanted 800MHz.

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