dkyeager

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20220826/spectrum/fcc-bumps-2-5-ghz-auction-to-six-rounds-a-day

Other trade news coverage of  T-Mobile - SpaceX deal:

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20220826/network-infrastructure/t-mobile-us-starlink-announce-spectrum-sharing-deal

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-spacex-promise-end-dead-zones-cell-phones-connected-satellites

https://www.lightreading.com/satellite/t-mobile-and-spacex-want-to-connect-regular-phones-to-satellites/d/d-id/779964?

https://www.lightreading.com/satellite/did-elon-musk-just-upstage-tim-cooks-big-iphone-14-surprise/a/d-id/779976?

Round 69.  Went to 6 rounds today.  Now all but done with only 2 licenses/counties remaining.  $426 Million.

The remaining counties are Guam and Morton, ND.  Of course qualified bidders could decide to go after more licenses over the weekend, else should be done very soon.  My guess is then a month until licenses are turned over to the winners.  We could be enjoying more n41 bandwidth before Halloween, especially in rural areas.

The key items from the presentation are, Sievert: "mid-band PCS", likely covered for free by our most popular plans, will take new satellites, T-Mobile is offering reciprocal roaming with carriers in other countries [using this].  Open to backhaul transport with SpaceX.  Will use select messaging apps to separate from all other data.  Will start with messaging next year.  Will be realtime service when we hit commercial service.  This PCS spectrum is nationwide.  The phone will scan for cell towers, then roaming, then satellite.

Musk: the phone you currently have will work. 5 or 6 meter long antennas on a side, roughly 25 square meters. Hardest technical issue: should work with even when we have a few satellites, may have to wait  30 minutes maybe. 2-4Mbps download for entire cell.  Several thousand cell calls or millions of messages.  Size of the cell will be quite large.  It will back up tower service in the case of disasters. Signal is adjusted by satellite for doppler effect.  Would love to have T-Mobile on Mars.

These details back my and others early morning thought that the frequency will be band 25 g block. In terms of phones, carriers have historically seen things in terms of the phones they are selling at that time.

37 licenses with demand greater than supply (0.46%).  All currently had 2 bidders.   Almost $417 Million.

99.54% of licenses are "settled", at least for now.

When looking at the 145 licenses without bidders, these places make the most sense to me:

Fayetteville, AR Ardmore, OK Reno, NV Kodiak Island, AK

They have some white space and some people.

In favor.  The key item to make this work is to quickly provide ground based cell service in any area that becomes congested. Your phone will also need to see what I imagine is a very weak signal, which may be of very limited duration if you are not near the top of a mountain (in a canyon, steep valley, or holler).  Could also lead to riskier behavior.

5 hours ago, jreuschl said:

New beta update available

Love the detailed release notes.

5 hours ago, iansltx said:

My guess here would be T-Mobile officially partnering with Starlink on rural backhaul. There isn't quite enough capacity to run n41 off of Starlink and get a significant throughput bump out of it, but n71+n25+n66+LTE? Absolutely. Which would allow T-Mobile to plunk down new rural sites wherever, and quickly bump any sites that can't get sufficient backhaul right now. Maybe that's 5k rural sites...which would massively improve coverage and reduce the need for roaming. Basically anything Starlink charges will be less expensive than roaming data, though I wouldn't expect T-Mobile home internet to be available on Starlink-fed sites.

I doubt it's a Spacemobile-like thing in part because getting that type of equipment into orbit would've leaked.

Agree.  Also for rural site management, especially at the end of fiber runs.  Sprint previously used satellite links for this previously.  Could also be used to boost capacity and redundancy.  Perhaps limited small cells like above.

40 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

Sent diagnostics from my Oneplus Nord n200 5g on OxygenOS Android 12.  No signal indication in status bar.  Notifications  setup screens have a totally different structure than Samsung.

edit: Nothing on status bar from any other app, just time, signal, battery % and battery icon.

Testing with production version.  Changed status on pulldown screen to important.  Now makes noise likely for every update on status bar top line, fixed with turning off ringtone and vibrate.   actual strength is was correct for a minute, now shows -- under LTE 2.  Turned back on banner causes a popup banner every time the rsrsp changes.  Checked back on banner and made no difference, including exit and reentry.

On 8/18/2022 at 2:30 PM, mikejeep said:

I am aware of issues with the combination icon showing network type and signal strength. Android 13 devices either show the signal strength intermittently or not at all, and I have one report of it occurring on OxygenOS 12 (above). I am still investigating, but as of right now these seem like OS bugs because I have not been able to find any new requirements to display these layered icons on the newest Android versions.

I will continue investigating; in the meantime, if anyone is able to identify a pattern of when it seems to work properly, please let me know. My Pixel 6 never shows the signal strength.

Sent diagnostics from my Oneplus Nord n200 5g on OxygenOS Android 12.  No signal indication in status bar.  Notifications  setup screens have a totally different structure than Samsung.

edit: Nothing on status bar from any other app, just time, signal, battery % and battery icon.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/25-ghz-auction-tops-400-million-gross-proceeds

Makes a prediction of 2 to 3 more weeks.  My view is it will be over in due course or when the FCC wants to speed up the action.   They may want to keep it going until their spectrum auction authority is extended, which expires Sept 23 iirc.

Round 55, 1.1% of licenses in demand remain to be settled compared to total licenses. Details: 92 licenses with demand > supply, 145 licenses with demand = 0,  7872 currently demand=supply, $402 Million worth of bids. The highest demand is in Guam with 3 bidders for one license -- historically no US Nationwide networks have sites in Guam.  Remember that new higher bids are still accepted for any license, given the bidder meets other rule requirements.

Here is the demand > supply license count by state / territory:

source: https://www.sashajavid.com/FCC_Auction108.php#county_details_table_overlay

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20220823/spectrum/auction-total-nears-400-million

Article does not add much to what we are already posting here.  No demand licenses are now greater than licenses with multiple bids at the end of round 54 (145 versus 120).  Licenses in play keep moving around the map.  Ohio had a few again the last time I looked. $400 Million in bids is imminent with the total at $399,646,420.  If you are on a PC, find the current status of your county here: https://sashajavid.com/Auction108_County_Excess_Demand.php   (give it a minute or two to fully load.)

Just now, jf15219 said:

They went from incentivizing self-migration to banning it for imminent automatic migration to barely migrating anybody in a mere matter of months.

For a merger that took years to finalize you'd have thought there was an actual plan that didn't suck so bad it had to be changed multiple times.

Banks hire consultants to do migrations.  T-Mobile should have done the same.

While it appears much better, the jury is still out on the network migration.  Supply shortages have not helped.  By fall we should know as the last Sprint non keep sites are retired (been dropping like flies in my area).  Any bad PR can be papered over by implementing auction 108 winnings, which should be in place quickly.  This stands to dramatically change the internet landscape for rural folks along with Verizon C-band.

Two rounds later, we are down to 222 competitive licenses, 147 with no demand, $367 Million.  By Monday there may be more no demand licenses than those with greater demand.  Historically it could go on for weeks or the FCC could raise the bid increments to effectively close it soon. 

source: https://www.sashajavid.com/FCC_Auction108.php#county_details_table_overlay

We are now at about 96.5% with demand = supply (which can individually change) at about $360 Million after round 43.  We have 283 licenses where demand is greater than supply, 7,587 where demand currently equals supply, and 147 with less demand than supply.  Looking at demand greater than supply by category, we get C1=15.5%, C2=47%, C3=37.5%.  Surprising how small C1 is relative to the rest.  The no bid licenses are about as earlier described: 100 encumbered, else Native American

Licenses remaining by state or territory:

2 hours ago, C.A.R said:

How long does it normally take from the time they put up new panels until they turn them on. We live in Northern Indiana and are almost right in the middle of 4 towers, so our service is not great at best but right now it seems that at least 2 of the towers are not broadcasting so the service is non existent in our immediate area. The 2 that I know are not broadcasting were Sprint towers. The one had the new racks with the big pannels attached sitting on the ground at the base of the tower for almost a year before the finally put them up.

At my home site (Sprint) they literally made the decision to change their approach in the middle of installing it.  Prior to that sites were changed immediately to T-Mobile. My home site has been operating about 15 months with the Sprint cabinet on a pallet feeding the T-Mobile antennas with b25 (which serves Sprint phones and 5g T-Mobile phones). The T-Mobile cabinets are installed but unused with some wires to the antennas iirc. New fiber has been run and a Nextel hut has just been demolished to make room for a generator.

Time flys by while the setup gathers dust, just like my other pain point - not being on T-Mobile billing. Second class citizens in one our larger cities. Sigh.

5.9GHz finally approved by a court: https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/court-upholds-fccs-decision-59-ghz.  This should be added to 5GHz wi-fi.  considering wi-fi 7 will be included in the qualcomm x70 and related SOCs, doubtful they will be able to add this now, unless designed to be added later.  5.9GHz will given us a third 160MHz unique carrier iirc, a major improvement.

waiting for about 400 with demand > supply, or 95% to look again in some detail.  Until then : https://www.sashajavid.com/FCC_Auction108.php#county_details_table_overlay

16 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Here is how many competitive permits are "remaining" in each state after round 27:

(bonus points: reply with the states/territories/districts that are already "settled".)

AL	4
AR	1
AS	2
AZ	5
CA	2
CO	53
DE	2
FL	5
GA	48
GU	3
HI	3
IA	40
ID	19
IL	7
IN	19
KS	113
KY	22
LA	9
MA	3
MD	11
ME	1
MI	48
MO	54
MP	10
MS	27
MT	33
NC	12
ND	22
NE	8
NH	1
NJ	2
NM	26
NV	17
NY	6
OH	24
OK	9
OR	2
PA	2
PR	1
SC	12
SD	47
TN	17
TX	36
UT	23
VA	8
WA	22
WI	22
WV	2
WY	11

Likely completed states and territories and districts:

Here is how many competitive permits are "remaining" in each state after round 27:

(bonus points: reply with the states/territories/districts that are already "settled".)

Almost 89% and $250 Million after round 27.

Pace picks up a bit.  Round 23.  About 86% now "uncontested" and $223 Million total.  Down to 159 licenses without bids.

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/the-quiet-brilliance-of-t-mobiles-5g-spectrum-strategy/a/d-id/779589?

Basically Money savings on 2.5 mostly rural auction are funding 600MHz purchases.  Also mentions continuing purchases of 2.5 outright. Likely understates the amount of MHz.

Auction going slightly faster with 4 auction sessions per day now, but still less than 80% "settled".  After 18 rounds it is at $190 Million, with $400 to $800 Million expected. could go on for another month.  check here for updates about 1 hour after each round: https://www.sashajavid.com/FCC_Auction108.php#county_details_table_overlay

life in the fast lane: 100,000 customers.  breakeven under a year per building.  Could run out of cash in 6 months. https://www.lightreading.com/broadband/fixed-wireless-access-(fwa)/starry-seeks-paths-to-bridge-its-funding-gap/d/d-id/779574?