United States Cellular announced that it has successfully executed its strategy to accumulate mid-band spectrum to enable its 5G growth strategy.
Combining mid-band purchases of CBRS spectrum in Auction 105 and C-Band in Auction 107 with the spectrum acquired in recently-completed Auction 110, UScellular will have mid-band spectrum in the great majority of its operating footprint and over 80% of subscribers will be covered with mid-band spectrum depths of 100 MHz or more.
UScellular successfully bid for spectrum licenses in the recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Auction 110 and purchased 380 licenses covering 97 percent of its subscribers for an estimated total cost of $580 million. The total cost, including gross bids as well as estimated relocation costs, results in an average price of $0.48 / MHz-pop versus the auction overall at $0.72 / MHz-pop.
Laurent Therivel, UScellular President and CEO
We know that to offer an exceptional 5G experience, we need all three layers of the 5G spectrum cake – low, mid and high band. And now with our successful participation in Auctions 105, 107 and 110, UScellular has achieved its mid-band position objectives.
Michael S. Irizarry, EVP, CTO and Head of Engineering and Information Technology
As we continue our multi-year network modernization and 5G deployment, we currently have low-band 5G coverage in portions of all our markets. And now we have ample mid-band spectrum that will provide capacity and coverage to support 5G use cases with competitive speeds for both mobile and fixed wireless users.
