U.S. Wireless Auction Insights: VZ is overwhelming winner in AWS-3 reauction

Research evidence excerpt

U.S. Wireless Auction Insights: VZ is overwhelming winner in AWS-3 reauction

Global Research

29 June 2026ab

U.S. Wireless Equities

AmericasAuction Insights: VZ is overwhelming winner in

AWS-3 reauction Wireless Communications

John C. Hodulik, CFA

Analyst

john.hodulik@ubs.com

Verizon the largest bidder in AWS-3 reauction; Upper C Band in 1H27 remains +1-212-713 4226

the focus

Batya Levi

The AWS-3 reauction generated $3.57B of proceeds at $2.53 per MHzPOP, beating Analyst

estimates and confirming demand for spectrum below 6 GHz remains very strong. batya.levi@ubs.com

Unsurprisingly given its previous use of this spectrum under a COVID-era lease, Verizon +1-212-713 8824

was by far the largest bidder spending $3.16B (almost 90% of the total) for 82 licenses Christopher Schoell, CPA

at $2.82 per MHzPOP. This was followed by T-Mobile at $278M for 102 licenses ($1.27/ Analyst

MHzPOP) and AT&T at ~$120M for 10 licenses ($2.80/MHzPOP). Other bidders spent christopher.schoell@ubs.com

just $11M on 6 of the 200 available licenses. This auction was a smaller opportunity for +1-212-713 4912

the industry given the piecemeal nature of the airwaves (200 licenses spread out across Ryan Gravett, CFA

the country with most being 10 MHz). With these results, we estimate T-Mobile Analyst

continues to lead the industry with ~350 MHz of sub 6 GHz airwaves in the top 100 ryan.gravett@ubs.com

markets on average, followed by AT&T at ~345 MHz (including pending spectrum +1-212-713 3344

acquisitions) and Verizon at ~295 MHz. The next big opportunity for the industry is the Albert Kim

upper C-Band auction with up to 180 MHz of nationwide spectrum anticipated in mid- Associate Analyst

27. Assuming 180 MHz are freed up with pricing of $1-1.20 per MHzPOP (similar to the albert.kim@ubs.com