News & explainers
Carriers, auctions and the dial.
Reporting and plain-language explainers on who is buying, selling and building on US wireless spectrum, written from the public record.
Two sales, one seller: how the EchoStar deals redraw the county map
EchoStar agreed in 2025 to sell most of its terrestrial spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX. Here is which rows of a county page move, and why the low-band row matters most.
ReadMHz on paper, miles on the ground: how to read a county page
A five-minute guide to the four tiers, the band plan and the licence table, written for people who have never opened the FCC licence database and never want to.
Why one auction still dominates the high-band row
The 2021 C-band auction raised more than any spectrum sale in US history. Five years on, its 280 MHz explains most of the difference between carriers above 3 GHz.