If you're buying a Verizon or AT&T phone this year, and you don't live out in the sticks, you need to keep an eye on C-band. The two carriers just spent $68.9 billion on this 5G spectrum, which could speed up their networks in areas covering about 60% of the US population.
The C-band results came out yesterday, and Verizon and AT&T snatched up all of the frequencies that will be available at the end of 2021. T-Mobile, US Cellular, and investor groups that don't build networks themselves, were the additional major purchasers for airwaves becoming available later.
The C-band is currently used by satellite companies, and they're moving out of it in two phases. The first phase, at the end of 2021, clears up 100MHz of total airwaves. The second phase, at the end of 2023, clears another 180MHz. For 2022 and 2023, Verizon got 60MHz of new spectrum and AT&T got 40MHz, in 46 out of the top 50 metro areas, or "partial economic areas" (PEA) in the FCC's framing. After 2023, Verizon's spectrum haul goes up to 160MHz on average nationwide.
Baltimore-Washington, Denver, Atlanta, Tucson, and Memphis probably won't see any C-band until 2024, and Hawaii never will (it's too dependent on satellite services.)
Rural users should be aware that while these PEAs have the names of major cities, they often include surrounding rural areas as well. For example, PEA 2 (Los Angeles) goes all the way to the Nevada border, and most of the land area in Florida is contained in PEAs 9, 13, and 29.
Comcast, Charter, and Dish each got nothing or almost nothing, which signals that they don't have real ambitions to compete, on a network level, with the three big providers. However, there's another auction coming up for 100MHz of spectrum between 3.45-3.55GHz, this October. They could play there.
The investor groups have played in spectrum before; their general game is to hold onto it for a while and then lease or sell it at a higher rate to wireless carriers who get desperate. With 5G, there's another possible play. 5G allows for "private" or corporate networks, so the investor groups could lease spectrum to companies providing network services to other companies for their own internal use.
Can They Build It Out?
Buildout is going to be key. One T-Mobile fan on Twitter, who obviously has an interest in playing down C-band, estimates it has 30% smaller footprint than T-Mobile's 2.5GHz network. Carriers will probably need to set up cells every half mile or less for C-Band. In central cities, though, the carriers have already been working hard for the past several years to "densify" their networks with smaller and smaller cells.
According to Nicholas Thomas, another wireless watcher who analyzes both Verizon's and T-Mobile's 5G buildouts, "Verizon's small cell network in many markets is top notch."
What 60MHz Gets You
Currently, the phones that support C-band are the iPhone 12 series; the Pixel 5; the LG Wing; and the Samsung Galaxy S21 series. There will surely be more this year. Look for phones that say they support frequency band "n77."
What can 60MHz of 5G do for you? Fortunately, T-Mobile offers an example. T-Mobile currently has 60MHz of standalone 5G in my neighborhood, so I can tell you exactly what performance 60MHz gets you. Right now, on standalone 5G, I'm getting around 350-400Mbps on 60MHz, added to whatever 4G speeds I get. Expect AT&T's 40MHz to get two-thirds of that.
As Verizon explained around the Super Bowl, it's not really about getting one person 350Mbps; it's about getting 10 of them 35Mbps reliably, or (in the 5G world, with network slicing) being able to give a school or factory prioritized airwaves that don't get clogged up by other users.
It's still not clear whether the carriers intend to offer any new services over C-band, such as home internet. Verizon's home internet strategy is right now much more focused on its ultra-wideband network, which has 10-12x the capacity its initial C-band network will, although it has even shorter range.
The carriers had no comment on the results; they're in a mandated "quiet period" where they aren't allowed to speak. Verizon and T-Mobile both have analyst days scheduled in mid-March where they're expected to talk about their rollout strategies.