New spectrum will be released on both sides of the North American border from January 14, with Canada auctioning 700MHz frequencies for LTE, and the US offering the PCS H Block.
There has been considerable controversy in Canada over the regulator’s attempts to encourage new entrants, especially as the newcomers which joined the mobile race after the AWS auction ‘ Wind, Mobilicity and Public Mobile ‘ have not been big commercial successes.
The major players, Bell Canada, Telus and Rogers, have been concerned that one or more of these second tier operators would gain preferential spectrum rights, and then be acquired by a larger firm, better able to turn those advantages into gold. Verizon was widely expected to bid for Wind and/or Mobilicity after the auction, though its plans have been put on hold as it raises record sums to buy Vodafone out of Verizon Wireless.
Even without the imminent prospect of Verizon’s cash, Wind Mobile says it will bid in the January auction of 700MHz spectrum, as will another new mobile player, cableco Eastlink. The big three, as well as regional providers SaskTel, Videotron and MTS, are also expected to participate. Eastlink said it wanted 700MHz spectrum in its cable footprint region of Alberta and Ontario (it already has some AWS frequencies too, but has not exploited them very much as yet).
Wind Mobile’s CEO Tony Lacavera told the Globe & Mail newspaper that new spectrum would improve his firm’s business case and that there was ‘a dire need for additional wireless spectrum in Canada to ensure the long term success of any independent wireless provider’. That may be too late for Mobilicity which, unless it gets a buyer, is thought to be in no position to afford to bid, though Public Mobile, which found a backer last year, is likely to take part.
South of the border, the FCC has outlined plans for its long awaited auction of PCS H Block spectrum, with Sprint expected to be the frontrunner. The agency will sell 10MHz in the 1.9GHz band in an auction starting on the same day as the Canadian one, January 14. It has set a reserve price of $1.56bn for the licences, with some of the money earmarked for funding FirstNet, the government project to build a nationwide broadband network for public safety agencies.
The FCC’s acting chairwoman, Mignon Clyburn, said in a statement that the auction “will help close the spectrum gap as well as contributing to the goal of making mobile broadband available to our nation’s first responders’.
The regulator was mandated by Congress last year to free up 65MHz of spectrum for mobile services, including the 10MHz in the H Block, by February 2015. An FCC order adopted in June created technical rules to keep the H Block from interfering with PCS signals in the adjacent band.