T-Mobile dominates latest FCC airwaves auction, as expected
MichaelGordon1


The Federal Communications Commission announced winners of an auction of the 2.5 GHz spectrum band, and unsurprisingly, T-Mobile (NASDAQ:TMUS) took the vast majority of the licenses.
The overall auction produced a less-than-expected $428M in bids, and T-Mobile (TMUS) offered up $304.3M in winning bids. The next-biggest bidder, PTI Pacifica, logged just $17.7M in winning bids.

Of 7,872 county-based licenses, T-Mobile won an overwhelming 7,156 of them.
National rivals Verizon (NYSE:VZ), AT&T (NYSE:T) and Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH) were nonfactors, and they had little incentive to take part, as T-Mobile already owned or leased large portions of the Education Broadband Service spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band.
That meant the auction had always set up as a "bargain" for T-Mobile (TMUS), Recon Analytics' Roger Entner pointed out to Mobile World Live. âOther bidders had only a chance of winning when T-Mobile did not want the license.â
Earlier, T-Mobile (TMUS) announced layoffs in its network operations and engineering group, more consolidation resulting from its merger with Sprint.