The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced results of Auction 110, revealing AT&T, Dish Network and T-Mobile US as the biggest winners of licences to use the 3.45GHz mid-band spectrum.

AT&T outspent its competitors and secured more licences than any other bidder, committing just over US$9 billion for 1,624 permits.

Dish Network, bidding as Weminuche, spent US$7.3 billion on 1,232.

T-Mobile US committed $2.9 billion for 199 licences. The operator already has a mid-band spectrum portfolio acquired through its takeover of Sprint, and is ahead of AT&T and Verizon in mid-band 5G deployments.

The auction generated a total of US$22.5 billion for the US government, making it the third-largest spectrum auction in the nation’s history behind a C-Band sale in 2021 (US$81 billion) and the AWS-3 sale in 2015 (US$44 billion).

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel stated Auction 110 “saw a substantial increase in the number of winning bidders per market” compared with the C-Band auction. She argued this is a positive sign for competition in the markets with multiple winning bidders.