01.15.16
Posted in Financials, Globalstar, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 3:17 pm by timfarrar
“I’m half crazy all for the love of you” is a good description of the state of mind of Globalstar investors and perhaps even more appropriately, this is the song HAL sings as he’s shut down in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But now Globalstar apparently has its answer, delivered by “Smitty” and the heads of the International Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology in a meeting on January 14.
It seems Globalstar was nervous about the outcome, carefully scheduling its Odeon conference call several days before this meeting (on January 11), so that the company could say that it “has not been asked by the Commission to provide any further technical data or engage in any additional testing.” Even now there would not be any formal demand made by the Commission, merely a discussion of how the proceeding could be brought to a conclusion.
Globalstar’s hopes were raised by the intervention of Public Knowledge in November, who (while not thinking much of Globalstar’s attempt to devise “yet-another-sure-fire-plan-to–make-beaucoup-bucks-using-ATC-and-this-time-TOTALLY-not-go-bankrupt“), saw this as an opportunity to set a precedent for the upcoming rulemaking on LTE-U, requiring new users of unlicensed spectrum (i.e. cellular operators) to guarantee that they will prevent interference and resolve any complaints that do arise.
However, numerous technical issues remain outstanding, because Globalstar has steadfastly maintained that its program of demonstrations (rather than cooperative laboratory testing) provides a sufficient record for the FCC to reach a decision, and as I indicated previously, Globalstar rejected a proposed FCC compromise last summer.
What is notable about the latest ex parte filing is how half-hearted Globalstar’s statements are compared to its submission in December, which at least tries to highlight some of the technical arguments. In the new filing, Globalstar doesn’t even bother to put additional details about its “Network Operating System” for resolving interference on the record, despite Public Knowledge stating last week that “For the Commission to formulate service rules, Globalstar must provide greater detail on how its proposed mitigation mechanism would work” and Globalstar apparently telling investors on the Odeon call that the “Company will succinctly address ‘framework’ and ‘additional testing’ from the new PK Ex Parte in the coming days.”
Its therefore pretty easy to conclude that far from this representing the last step before approval as some of Globalstar’s “half crazy” investors apparently think, the FCC indicated that more information will be required before they are prepared to even consider moving forward, likely in the form of a cooperative testing plan agreed with opponents. Some have suggested that if such a discussion had happened, Globalstar would have been obligated to put it in the ex parte filing, but the FCC’s ex parte rules at §1.1204 (a)(10)(iii) specifically note that “information relating to how a proceeding should or could be settled, as opposed to new information regarding the merits, shall not be deemed to be new information” that must be summarized.
Given these developments, and a share price which has now fallen by more than 50% in the last six weeks, it hardly seems like great timing for Globalstar’s new COO to start work. However, if TLPS is not going to be approved any time soon, Globalstar will have to focus on making something (however modest) of the MSS business, if only to minimize the cure payments due under the COFACE agreement in the next couple of years, and hope that additional funding can be found to meet these obligations.
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01.08.16
Posted in Aeronautical, Financials, Inmarsat, Operators, Services at 2:27 pm by timfarrar
Its been interesting to see Inmarsat’s stock price rising recently based on excitement about the prospects for its inflight connectivity business, as well as the fourth GX satellite (which Inmarsat hopes to lease to the Chinese government as the Financial Times also reported in October).
We published our new Inmarsat profile in December which highlights the company’s prospects for strong revenue growth from GX over the next few years, although since then Inmarsat has faced a few setbacks, with the Intelsat appeal of Inmarsat’s US Navy contract win being sustained and Apax finally emerging as the purchaser of Airbus’s Vizada division, despite Inmarsat telling people before Christmas it expected to buy this business in early 2016.
However, there is the potential for an even more worrying development in the near future, with ViaSat expected to give more details of its ViaSat-3 project in early February. This seems to represent something of an acceleration in ViaSat’s plans since last November, and it now looks possible that this announcement could include deals with some large new airline customers to provide advanced passenger connectivity services.
If it can be realized, ViaSat’s proposed 1Tbps capacity for ViaSat-3 would have a dramatic impact on bandwidth expectations and more importantly the low cost of capacity would make it feasible to offer low cost or free Internet connectivity, including streaming video, to airline passengers, even as data consumption continues to grow rapidly in the future. ViaSat could potentially do deals with Southwest and/or American, the first of these sounding the long awaited death knell for GEE/Row44′s connectivity business and the second proving disastrous for Gogo, which currently gets about 40% of its passenger connectivity revenues from American Airlines (though any fleetwide migration to ViaSat wouldn’t happen until after the current 10 year contract expires in 2018, just as seems likely for Virgin America).
That really would represent an explosion in the inflight connectivity market, though not one which would be welcomed by other satellite operators and service providers, many of whom have a difficult relationship with ViaSat. Indeed its notable how ViaSat is now also throwing its one-time partner Thales LiveTV under the bus, claiming that they mounted “a campaign of whispers…alleging that Exede did not meet its advertised performance.”
The implications of deals that could ultimately bring ViaSat’s number of served aircraft in North America up to as many as 2000 planes (i.e. half the equipped fleet) would be wide ranging, not least for inflight connectivity service providers, who’ve become used to seeing Gogo and Panasonic as the market leaders, and passengers, who’ve become accustomed to a market where “Inflight Wi-Fi Is Expensive, and No One Uses It.”
Even amongst satellite operators there could be some upheaval, with Inmarsat having just ordered $600M of I6 satellites (actually $900M+ including launch, insurance and ground segment costs) carrying what looks, in comparison, like a puny ~30Gbps per satellite, SES having signed a ten year $290M bandwidth contract with GEE in November 2014, and Intelsat potentially set to lose some of its claimed “73% share of today’s aeronautical satellite communications market.” Most importantly, if passenger expectations of free or low cost inflight WiFi start to spread beyond North America, then Inmarsat’s estimate that its European Air-To-Ground network will generate $300K per plane per year (more than double Gogo’s current run rate) would look even more questionable.
Widespread angst about the effects of new HTS satellites and slowing revenue growth is already weighing on the outlook for the satellite industry, but if ViaSat really does have one or more big deals to announce next month, then it would take concerns over future capacity and pricing trends to a whole new level. In that case we’d better all buckle in and get prepared for a very bumpy ride.
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11.29.15
Posted in AT&T, Clearwire, DISH, Financials, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, Verizon at 8:32 am by timfarrar
I woke up this morning to read New Street Research’s latest 3Q2015 Wireless Trends Review, subtitled “Competition Gets Ugly: The Big Guys Have A Problem” and while I agree that competitive pressures in the US wireless market are getting ugly, I’m afraid it is the analysts rather the “Big Guys” that have a problem. In particular, New Street’s “network capacity framework” that suggests Verizon “have half the capacity they will need by 2020 to maintain current network quality” is based on a completely flawed premise, just like most other pronouncements of an imminent spectrum crisis.
This network capacity framework calculates the number of “MHz-sites” that Verizon has for LTE in the top 25 markets and assumes that data demand will grow at 30% from 2015 to 2020 (reaching 10GB/LTE sub per month by then). Ignoring the fact that New St doesn’t know its Petabytes (1 million Gbytes) from its Exabytes (1 billion Gbytes), Verizon’s “aggregate LTE data demand” is projected to increase five fold between 2015 and 2020, while Verizon is expected to increase its deployed LTE spectrum from 68 to 138MHz and its number of LTE macrosites in these markets from 21K to 27.2K over the period, which supposedly will result in 2.5 times growth in network capacity. Thus New St concludes that Verizon will have only half the capacity needed to meet demand, without buying more spectrum from DISH.
This thesis is even more flawed than the Brattle Group study for CTIA back in June, because it completely fails to consider the potential for improvements in network efficiency over the period as LTE-Advanced technologies are deployed. Even Brattle Group acknowledges that “LTE+” will carry over 70% more bps per Hz than 4G LTE, based on a move from 2×2 MIMO to 4×4 MIMO, and the original source for these estimates (Rysavy Research’s August 2014 paper on “Beyond LTE: Enabling the Mobile Broadband Explosion“) acknowledges that many additional improvements are feasible.
Correcting for this error alone, and assuming capacity constrained locations are upgraded to LTE-Advanced by 2020, New Street’s supposed capacity shortfall is reduced from 50% to 14%, and so the number of additional macro sites that Verizon would need to build is reduced from 26.7K to only 4.5K (which based on the FCC’s October 2010 estimate of $550K per cellsite would cost only $2.5B in incremental capex). That hardly seems to justify Verizon spending tens of billions of dollars to buy DISH’s spectrum.
New Street also ignore other sources of incremental capacity (such as LTE-U) and reject small cells as infeasible because they have supposedly only 1/3 the capacity of macro sites (Rysavy in fact points out in Figure 68 of his report that through careful placement to meet hotspot demand, four picocells per macrocell could produce roughly a 10x increase in capacity).
Its hardly surprising that New Street conclude Verizon’s behavior is “perplexing” and suggest that rather than “discounting to hang onto subs” Verizon “should be taking up price to shed subs faster in congested markets to preserve superior network performance for their most valuable subs.” But perhaps Verizon do actually understand network engineering and the potential for network capacity enhancements better than analysts with a simplistic, erroneous spreadsheet model?
In these circumstances Verizon would also feel happy to say no to Ergen’s blackmail and refuse to pay more than their previous offer for DISH’s spectrum (which I guess is around $1/MHzPOP). In fact, it would seem likely that Verizon don’t want a deal at any price ahead of the incentive auction, if that would enable Ergen to bid up the price of spectrum once again. On the other hand, Ergen is undoubtedly keen to find a partner to endorse the value of his spectrum holdings and force Verizon back to the table. As part of that effort, I’m told he has been visiting Google again recently, just as he did back in 2012 when he was trying to pressure AT&T to do a spectrum deal.
One possibility for such a partnership would be to reinvigorate DISH’s rooftop small cell deployment plan, and meet Ergen’s AWS-4 buildout requirements, using the AWS-4 uplinks (2000-2020MHz) as downlinks in conjunction with his 1695-1710MHz uplink spectrum. Remember that Google has backed similar efforts in the past, when it funded Clearwire (rather than LightSquared) in 2008, in order to get a competitive 4G network built out quickly, and push Verizon and AT&T to do the same. However, Ergen has little more than a month left to get a deal done before the auction restrictions kick in, so time is not on his side.
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11.10.15
Posted in Financials, Inmarsat, Operators, Services, VSAT at 9:40 am by timfarrar
Inmarsat has certainly had a great deal of success in the last two months, winning key contracts with the US Navy, Lufthansa and most recently Singapore Airlines, as well as a strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom to built out its S-band European Aviation Network. While some of these wins may be a direct result of what Inmarsat refers to as “success-based capex” (otherwise known as giving away free terminals), these deals certainly have the potential to provide a significant boost to the company’s revenue growth outlook.
Moreover, it seems that the biggest deal is yet to come, as Inmarsat hinted on its results call last week that “customers in different regions [are] vying to have the [fourth GX] satellite placed over their areas of interest” and the plan for this satellite is expected to be finalized before Inmarsat announces its Q4 results in early 2016. However, in practice there is one deal which is far and away the most likely outcome, and it appears these statements are simply a matter of Inmarsat trying to make sure that it still has some negotiating leverage.
That deal was clearly apparent during last month’s State Visit to the UK by Chinese President Xi Jinping, when the only British company he visited was Inmarsat. Inmarsat highlighted that one purpose was “to understand how Inmarsat is able to uniquely contribute to President Xi’s One Belt One Road (‘OBOR’) strategic vision through the provision of critical global mobile broadband connectivity services, including Inmarsat’s revolutionary new service, Global Xpress” and noted that “Inmarsat has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China Transport Telecommunication & Information Centre (CTTIC) to establish a strategic partnership to deliver Inmarsat’s revolutionary Inmarsat-5 Global Xpress mobile satellite broadband communications connectivity throughout China and OBOR.”
I’m told that the original intention of President Xi’s visit, accompanied by HRH The Duke of York and the UK Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was to have a signing ceremony for the agreement to formalize this “strategic partnership” and that would involve a full lease of the fourth GX satellite to China. Unfortunately the final agreement required certain changes and therefore could not be completed in time.
However, assuming this deal can be completed, Inmarsat is likely to receive a further significant boost to its revenues. Given Chinese expectations are typically that they will receive lower prices than other countries, I’d expect the payments to Inmarsat for capacity could potentially be on the order of $100M p.a. (assuming the agreement is for 10+ years), depending on who covers the capex and opex costs for the new GX gateways in China. And China could then be in a position to provide free or subsidized satellite broadband capacity to adjacent countries in support of its geopolitical OBOR ambitions, just as Google and Facebook have been working to bring Internet access to developing countries.
Once this deal is done, Inmarsat can move onto ordering I6 satellites with both L-band and Ka-band capacity, in order to supplement the (somewhat limited) capacity of the initial GX constellation. But with Eutelsat apparently looking for French government backing to buy a 3-4 satellite Ka-band system, and ViaSat (not coincidentally) announcing the intention to build its own even bigger 1Tbps satellites, the race to add lower cost Ka-band capacity is far from over. More importantly, despite all the attention given to Ku-band HTS in the last year or two, its hard to agree with the statement Gogo made on its Q3 results call (after its GX distribution deal with Inmarsat was terminated) that “there are simply not enough Ka satellites now or for the foreseeable future to meet the needs of global aviation”.
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09.14.15
Posted in Broadband, Financials, Globalstar, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Services, Spectrum, VSAT at 9:20 pm by timfarrar
Paris is the place to be in September for satellite industry gossip (though not the weather), and this year is no different. There’s been plenty of chatter already about the MSS sector, as people look forward to Inmarsat’s upcoming investor day on October 8. The company has seen some good news recently, displacing Intelsat General to win a large US Navy contract last week. However, Inmarsat’s aggressiveness on price is highlighted by the reduction in the total ceiling price from $543M last time around to only $450M over 5 years (which is in turn perhaps double the US Navy’s most likely spending profile). Though this contract should help Inmarsat show top line revenue growth in 2016 and beyond, a significant proportion of the capacity (in C, Ku and X-band) will have to be bought in from other players, limiting Inmarsat’s ability to make a profit.
However, the other main news about Inmarsat is that the company is expected to order its first I6 L-band satellite before the end of 2015, and it will include substantial additional Ka-band capacity to supplement the rather limited amount of capacity available on GX, even after the fourth GX satellite is launched in 2016 or 2017. That will likely mean a total capital expenditure of $450M-$500M, plausibly repeated once or twice more in the next few years, just to keep Inmarsat in the bandwidth race.
There’s also been some chatter about the FCC regulatory situation as it affects Globalstar, where a source confirms that my suppositions in June about the purpose of Globalstar’s change in tone to the FCC were correct and that a deal was on the table to approve terrestrial use just for Globalstar’s own MSS spectrum and not the wider 22MHz TLPS channel. However, this approval was only going to be for low power use, and would therefore not be of much import, except as a demonstration of regulatory progress.
Then after Jay Monroe met with several FCC Commissioners in late July he withdrew this potential compromise and insisted instead on full TLPS approval, presumably believing that if permission either to use the unlicensed spectrum or high power terrestrial use or the MSS band was treated as a separate, second stage of the process, a conclusion would be delayed for years, making it impossible for Globalstar to deploy or monetize its spectrum anytime soon.
So now it seems we are back to an impasse, and though Globalstar has recently added some additional information into the docket on an experimental deployment in Chicago, this documentation doesn’t provide quantitative information on (for example) the exact rise in bit error rates seen by services like Bluetooth, merely observing that no observable performance impact was noted. As a result, I believe it is unlikely that the FCC will feel able to rule on full TLPS approval anytime soon (i.e. this year).
Ironically, Globalstar’s consultants are also acting for LightSquared, and have proposed a similar program of tests for GPS interference, again based on a “KPI” criteria of observable degradation in performance, rather than actual quantified impact on the signal to noise ratio. Most observers seem to believe that LightSquared is no more likely to gain FCC approval for its plans than before, and that after the recent publication of the DOT test plan for their Adjacent Band Compatibility study, the FCC will wait for those tests to be conducted, which could take a considerable period of time.
Predictably LightSquared is already criticizing the DOT test plan, very likely setting us off on exactly the same well trodden (and ultimately disastrous) path as before. As a result, I’m sure that those hedge funds who committing funding to the bankruptcy plan (especially those in the $3B+ second lien, which sits behind $1.5B of first lien debt) must now be feeling pretty nervous. I wonder if any of them will now be frantically searching to see if they have any way to avoid funding these commitments once the FCC approves the transfer of control?
Finally, in yet more FCC-related news, the consensus here seems to be that the 14GHz ATG proceeding may also fail to reach a conclusion in the near term, as I predicted earlier this month, due to the uncertainty over how to protect NGSO systems. Instead, ViaSat’s Ka-band solution seems to be going from strength to strength, with the hugely positive reactions to the performance on JetBlue contributing to their recent win at Virgin America and to other airlines taking another look at what will be the best future-proof solution. All this makes Gogo’s predictions that its US market share is secure and that its revenue potential is “like a gazillion dollars” seem just as foolish as it sounds.
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05.26.15
Posted in AT&T, DISH, Financials, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, Verizon at 12:06 pm by timfarrar
Its been interesting to note that AT&T and Verizon did not file any petitions to deny the AWS-3 license applications of DISH’s two Designated Entities, NorthStar and SNR, despite Verizon and AT&T both having earlier been vocal in denigrating DISH’s bidding strategy in their comments in the FCC’s bidding procedures docket 14-170.
Instead the opposition was left to a couple of small bidders plus a collection of ‘public interest’ organizations, who followed the path set out by Verizon, and alleged violations of antitrust laws by DISH and its DEs. DISH’s response argued that there was no antitrust violation and that the joint bidding arrangements (including realtime coordination of bids during each round, which most people including myself thought was not allowed) were fully disclosed.
While the eventual FCC decision on DISH’s $3.3B discount remains uncertain (and according to FCC Chairman Wheeler would not in any case involve denial of the licenses or reauctioning of the spectrum), it is far from a slam dunk (as some argued originally) that DISH will keep the discount. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Verizon and AT&T could even be better off if DISH kept the DE discount, and that might provide one reason why they held back from challenging DISH’s licenses directly.
Of course DISH would lose $3.3B if the DE discount was rejected, but in that case, DISH would acquire NorthStar and SNR under the terms of its agreements with the DEs, and would be free to consolidate and restructure its AWS-3 and AWS-4 spectrum holdings. After that, in my view, the most likely end game would be to spin-off all of DISH’s spectrum (AWS-3, AWS-4, 700MHz E-block, PCS H-block) into a holding company, which could lease individual licenses to any wireless operator, and raise perhaps $20B-$30B of debt at the spinco level, flowing that cash back up to DISH (and perhaps allowing Ergen to take some chips off the table).
Any repricing of the AWS-3 spectrum would presumably increase Ergen’s asking price for his leases, meaning that Verizon and AT&T might ultimately be the ones to suffer from the removal of the discount. In fact Verizon might even decide it had to pay up and pre-empt the spinoff because of the prospect that this arrangement would make more spectrum available in key markets for both T-Mobile and Sprint.
However, in order to execute these spinoff plans and enter into meaningful leases of AWS-4 spectrum, it is critical that DISH secures interoperability for its AWS-4 downlinks (2180-2200MHz) with the AWS-3 blocks. T-Mobile and Sprint know all too well that building out networks in bands without an ecosystem (such as T-Mobile’s deployment of WCDMA/HSPA in the AWS-1 band, which was ultimately abandoned, and Sprint’s PCS G-block LTE network) makes it much more difficult and expensive to secure handsets (hence there was no WCDMA iPhone operating in AWS-1 and Sprint had to guarantee billions of dollars of purchases to secure a G-block iPhone). As a result, they are unlikely to want to get into bed with DISH and make use of AWS-4 unless and until there is some guarantee of a handset ecosystem.
While DISH can pursue a band class designation for AWS-4 supplementary downlinks through 3GPP, we only need to look at the story of Band Classes 12 and 17 (in the lower 700MHz band) to see that a band class designation on its own, without any regulatory mandate for interoperability, is insufficient to ensure a handset ecosystem is created. And at the end of the day, the FCC was forced to intervene and broker a deal to ensure interoperability in the lower 700MHz band, before T-Mobile moved to buy 700MHz A block licenses for its low band coverage buildout.
Its therefore hardly surprising that AWS-3/4 interoperability was a key request of DISH in March 2014 before the auction, and fiercely opposed by Verizon and AT&T. At the time, the FCC decided not to impose a mandate, but strongly suggested that cooperative efforts should be made to ensure interoperability with AWS-4:
In the absence of technical impediments to interoperability, if the Commission determines that progress on interoperability has stalled in the standards process, future AWS-3 licensees are hereby on notice that the Commission will consider initiating a rulemaking regarding the extension of an interoperability mandate that includes AWS-4 (2180-2200 MHz) at that time. Should we undertake such a rulemaking, relevant considerations may include considerations of harmful interference, technical cost and difficulty of implementation, and the extent to which licensees are common to both the AWS-3 and AWS-4 bands.
Given the likelihood that AT&T and Verizon will engage in delaying tactics (not least due to the relatively short period in which DISH needs to start moving ahead on deployment), DISH will very probably need help from the FCC to push AWS-3/4 interoperability forward. However, if DISH is seen to have gamed the auction rules and secured an unwarranted multi-billion dollar discount, it will be far more difficult for the FCC to help out DISH on interoperability over AT&T and Verizon’s objections.
That might in fact be AT&T and Verizon’s ultimate goal: box DISH in with no possibility of a deal with T-Mobile or Sprint to put its AWS-4 spectrum to use, and wait for Charlie to cry uncle when he runs up against his AWS-4 buildout deadlines. Note that it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that the 4 year interim deadline to cover 40% of the population in each Economic Area by March 2017 will be missed, which will bring forward the final 70% coverage deadline to March 2020 (the timeline was extended to 8 years as part of the H-block deal in December 2013, but one year will be deducted if the interim deadline is not met).
Thus if DISH is unable to reach lease agreements with T-Mobile and/or Sprint for an AWS-4 buildout by the first half of 2017 at the latest (which will require interoperability to be secured in the next 18 months or so), Ergen will be under considerable pressure to moderate his price demands for a sale to Verizon or AT&T. As a result, AT&T and Verizon may win even more if DISH keeps the DE discount, than the $3.3B that DISH loses if the discount is rejected.
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01.31.15
Posted in AT&T, DISH, Financials, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, Sprint at 4:00 pm by timfarrar
Despite it coming as a “surprise” to many reporters (and Wall St analysts) that DISH ended up with more total winning bids (before DE discounts) than Verizon in the AWS-3 spectrum auction, and that DISH got a 25% DE discount on its bids, the outcome is exactly what I predicted from the bidding patterns back in November. I was particularly amused to look back at Jonathan Chaplin’s comment from his December 7 report which poured scorn on my thesis, stating:
Some have suggested that DISH is distorting prices by bidding against themselves (DISH has three bidding entities that can’t communicate with each other during the auction). While possible, this is highly, highly unlikely.
[As a reader suggests, perhaps I should take this opportunity to note Chaplin's follow-up proposal on January 11 that DISH should do a LightSquared and set up a wholesale capacity business generating $10B per year. While possible, this is highly, highly unlikely.]
Its useful to examine exactly why DISH was so successful in driving up the price of the AWS-3 paired spectrum to a price far beyond anyone’s expectations. One of the key objectives for a bidder in the early rounds of an auction is to discover the amount of spectrum that its rivals are looking to acquire (only later does it become possible to discover how much they are prepared to pay for that spectrum). The price usually rises fastest in the key cities and then as the mix of demand becomes clear, bidders can switch over to second tier licenses knowing roughly how much spectrum they will end up being able to win.
We know that AT&T was looking to buy a paired 10MHz block, and it seems likely that Verizon would have been seeking roughly the same. Meanwhile T-Mobile wanted to selectively pick up one or two paired 5MHz blocks. If DISH hadn’t been bidding then everyone could have got what they wanted at close to the reserve price. However, adding DISH to the mix meant that the four key players were trying to buy more than the 2x25MHz of paired spectrum that was available.
More importantly, DISH was bidding through three separate entities and instructed them to bid on all the licenses simultaneously in key cities, to ensure that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile simply didn’t know how much spectrum each other and DISH were looking to buy.
The chart below shows the bidding patterns for the G, H, I and J blocks in New York (the G block is a smaller 2x5MHz CMA license, while the H and I blocks are 2x5MHz BEA licenses and the J block is a 2x10MHz BEA license).
We can see that all three DISH entities bid on every one of the New York paired license blocks they weren’t already holding all the way through Round 15, by which time the total combined gross price had reached $2.81B ($2.28/MHzPOP). In fact, it wasn’t until Round 18 (when the price reached $3.81B or $3.12/MHzPOP) that DISH’s bidding on these licenses began to slow (and SNR even overbid its own winning bid in Round 17).
[Incidentally, DISH's 3 entities combined were the biggest bidder for much of the auction, notably as late as Round 63, where they held $14.7B of gross PWBs or 35% of the $41.6B total, compared to $12.6B for AT&T, $10.5B for Verizon and $2.1B for T-Mobile. When the reserve price was met in Round 13, DISH held a total of $5.4B of PWBs, 44% of the $12.3B auction total at that point in time, compared to only $2.7B for AT&T, $2.1B for Verizon and $1.3B for T-Mobile.]
DISH clearly wrote the instructions to its DEs very well, because in the end there were very few cases where the final winning bid from SNR was topping an existing bid from NorthStar or vice versa (the largest license I’ve seen where this happened is the B1 unpaired license in Tampa BEA034 which sold for $21.4M before the DE discount). And it does seem that DISH complied with the letter of the rules: even though the FCC still needs to rule on whether the DE discount should be granted, it seems unlikely the FCC would want the auction to descend into chaos (which could theoretically result in a re-run).
However, its clear that the rules for future auctions will need to be rewritten significantly – I would expect severe restrictions on DE discounts and common ownership of different bidding entities at the very least. Indeed, it will now be very difficult to come up with a workable structure to advantage smaller operators like Sprint and T-Mobile in the incentive auction next year.
Where does the outcome leave us? Ergen did not buy a readily deployable collection of spectrum, instead seeking a blocking position in key cities (including New York and Chicago) in an attempt to force other operators to make a deal with him. Interestingly, most of DISH’s paired AWS-3 spectrum is in the G block, which is adjacent to and perhaps more quickly usable with the AWS-1 spectrum band, rather than being aggregated directly with the adjacent AWS-4 downlinks in the longer term like the J block. DISH also acquired most of the unpaired uplink blocks, which appears to be a hedge against the potential (and now perhaps likely) loss of LightSquared.
However, with AT&T winning enough AWS-3 to meet its spectrum needs (and make it highly indebted) for the next few years (not to mention AT&T’s ownership of DirecTV which makes a tie-up with DISH very difficult), it seems clear that Ergen is setting his sights squarely on a deal to sell DISH (or perhaps more likely lease its spectrum, given the difficulty of reaching agreement on a sale price) to Verizon.
So now, as I pointed out in November, the key question is whether Sprint will take this opportunity to satisfy Verizon’s spectrum needs through a sale of 2.5GHz spectrum? Given everyone in the industry is fed up with Charlie, that certainly seems like a plausible next step.
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01.29.15
Posted in DISH, Financials, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 5:43 pm by timfarrar
The AWS-3 auction has finally closed today, after lasting far longer and attracting much higher bids than anyone thought possible. So now we are confronted with a flood of headlines saying the auction “has raised” $44.9B.
Of course that is not true. The total of Provisional Winning Bids is $44.9B. But look carefully at the FCC’s own blog post about the auction results. This blog post indicates the auction raised $7B for public safety, $300M for research, $115M for grants, funding for relocation (estimated at a total of $5.1B before the auction), plus “more than $20 billion” for deficit reduction.
So by my count that totals $32.5B. How can that be when the winning bids totaled $44.9B? The answer is that total amount raised will be reduced by any discounts accruing to Designated Entities, who are entitled to a 25% discount. And we know that Ergen is backing two DEs (SNR and NorthStar) in the auction. While the FCC is not going to give an exact figure for the amount raised, until they announce the winning bidders tomorrow (Friday), why wouldn’t the FCC have trumpeted “more than $30B” or even “more than $25B” raised for deficit reduction if they could make that statement? (Note: Walt Piecyk believes it is because the original 2012 legislation projected $20.4B would be available for deficit reduction).
If the amount raised for deficit reduction is less than $30B then that puts the DE discount at more than $2.4B, implying the DEs won more than $9.6B of PWBs and spent more than $7.2B net. If the amount raised for deficit reduction is less than $25B then that puts the DE discount at more than $7.4B, implying the DEs won more than $29.6B of PWBs and spent more than $22.2B net. And no-one has come up with a plausible case for any DEs other than those backed by Ergen to have billions of dollars available to spend on spectrum.
So it looks like Ergen is going to come out with what’s very likely more than $10B in PWBs and perhaps even $20B+ in PWBs before his 25% discount. That would be a severe disappointment to those who believe that there is unprecedented demand for spectrum, because the result will have been dictated by Ergen’s desire to corner the spectrum market, taking advantage of a windfall discount granted him by the FCC. It would certainly contradict the consensus of Wall St analysts, who apparently can’t conceive of Ergen actually wanting to bet the company on buying up spectrum.
UPDATE (1/30): The FCC has now released the full results, confirming that the final total of net winning bids is $41.3B, with $3.3B of the $3.5B in DE discounts accruing to SNR and NorthStar (i.e. DISH). That means that the amount raised for deficit reduction is less than $30B (actually just under $29B) and we are certainly set for a battle over whether DISH’s “small business” discount is warranted. The results also basically confirm my guesses about the double bidding in Round 36 and elsewhere, where SNR and NorthStar both bid for the license, but their opposition was AT&T, not Verizon as I (and others) thought at the time.
Of course, Ergen’s discount is going to raise massive protests from Verizon and AT&T and its interesting to note that the FCC blog post also stated that “Our team in the Wireless Bureau will thoroughly review and scrutinize each application to assure that granting each license is in the public interest and, where applicable, that each applicant has complied with the Commission’s bidding credit rules.”
Even if Ergen is successful in retaining his discount (and if he doesn’t then the whole auction may fall apart) then this result (as I predicted back in November) may lead Sprint to ally with Verizon and AT&T to isolate DISH and make sure no-one needs to lease Charlie’s spectrum. After all, we’ve already seen Sprint’s CEO indicate he is looking to sell off some of the 2.5GHz spectrum.
Recently we’ve also see Ergen demanding LightSquared pay him off in cash, in exchange for agreeing to the bankruptcy plan, and if he is going to spend $10B or more for AWS-3 spectrum, then that cash may be needed to fund the DEs.
UPDATE (1/30): DISH also won most of the unpaired uplink spectrum in the AWS-3 auction, so it may not need LightSquared’s spectrum (which in the near term most likely consists of unpaired uplinks) in any case.
Will Charlie’s all-in bet pay off? What will be the next piece of his strategy to monetize the spectrum? DISH won’t be able to give any details until after the downpayment deadline (10 business days after the results are announced). But we will have plenty of time to speculate, and tomorrow should be a very interesting day.
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11.26.14
Posted in DISH, Financials, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, Sprint at 7:35 am by timfarrar
If I’m right and DISH is determined to win a significant AWS-3 spectrum position at the end of the auction, then it seems highly likely that one or both of AT&T and Verizon will leave the auction with a significant shortfall in AWS spectrum in major cities including New York, Los Angeles and potentially several other markets.
Then it seems Ergen’s calculation is that he will have significant leverage to force AT&T and Verizon to deal with him and lease spectrum on his terms (including supporting interoperability for his AWS-4 spectrum holdings). However, one way for AT&T and Verizon to freeze Ergen out and avoid having to make a deal would be for them to instead purchase 2.5GHz spectrum from Sprint. Its plausible that Sprint could raise as much as $10B relatively easily from selling say 30MHz to each of AT&T and Verizon, leaving Ergen holding an asset with no clear route to monetization and a buildout deadline which will start to become a pressing concern within a year or two (especially if DISH has not yet standardized the AWS-4 band).
So does Masa Son want to boost DISH’s position at the expense of AT&T and Verizon, or would he like to get revenge for DISH’s actions in the Sprint & Clearwire bidding wars last year? If DISH is stuck with billions of dollars of spectrum it can’t lease, then DISH will be disadvantaged in mounting a competing T-Mobile bid, when Sprint renews its attempts after the 2016 Presidential election, because DISH will struggle to raise as much cash and DT will be reluctant to accept shares whose value is based primarily on spectrum assets with limited utility (remember that T-Mobile isn’t in a position to create an ecosystem for AWS-4, unlike AT&T and Verizon).
In fact, Sprint could point to DISH’s reserves of spectrum as providing the basis of a new competitor in the wireless market, and could even gain the tacit endorsement of AT&T and Verizon for a purchase of T-Mobile. In addition, by selling some spectrum now, Sprint raises money to participate in the 600MHz incentive auction (where DISH may not have the resources to compete) and gets out from under the spectrum screen limitation. So it might well make sense for Masa to make a choice which boosts AT&T and Verizon, rather than cooperating with DISH.
Incidentally, another side-effect of the AWS-3 auction prices is that Phil Falcone is now scrambling to get back into the LightSquared reorganization plan, as his argument that LightSquared’s spectrum should be valued at more than the debt gains support from these price benchmarks. For example, the unpaired uplink 10MHz B1 block (1700-1710MHz), currently valued at almost $1.3B, will be used to argue that LightSquared’s two 10MHz uplink blocks alone are worth double this sum. So the obvious counterstrike from Ergen is likely to be to try and blow up the reorganization plan and force LightSquared into liquidation.
I understand conversion to Chapter 7 would invalidate the Inmarsat Cooperation Agreement, and thereby make it much harder for anyone to take on the risk of buying LightSquared’s assets. Of course, that is unlikely to worry Ergen (he would be expected to take a hard line with Inmarsat in any case), and would provide an opportunity to potentially buy LightSquared’s satellite assets for considerably less than the value of the LP debt and boost Ergen’s attempts to corner the spectrum market. As one person close to the case told me, such an outcome would literally make Judge Chapman cry.
UPDATE (11/26): Another interesting question is the status of the 650M MHzPOPs of EBS spectrum (38MHz) that NextWave holdco controls in New York City. I would expect hectic bidding to secure access to that spectrum, if DISH turns out to be the winner of much of the AWS-3 spectrum in New York. Of course, Ergen has likely already thought of that, and I’d speculate that he might even have locked up an agreement to buy that spectrum block in advance of the AWS-3 auction, making it harder for Verizon and AT&T to address their potential spectrum shortfall in the New York market.
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11.23.14
Posted in DISH, Financials, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 8:42 am by timfarrar
That seems to be a pretty good summary of what Charlie Ergen has told SNR and NorthStar, the Designated Entities (DEs) which appear to be doing a lot of the bidding in the AWS-3 auction. We’re still seeing multiple bids on the New York and Los Angeles J block licenses (which are now priced at over $3.6B for just these two licenses), and so its possible that DISH’s DEs may now hold in excess of $10B of Provisionally Winning Bids (PWBs) between them.
Its interesting to note that because Ergen is a designated bidder for American AWS Wireless I LLC (the DISH subsidiary), he wouldn’t be allowed to communicate with either SNR or NorthStar during the auction. So they must be bidding in line with instructions he gave them previously, and he can’t change course in the middle of the auction, if bidding has gone well beyond what even he expected. Ergen could have set a limit on the $/MHzPOP that he is prepared to pay for a single license and/or an overall dollar cap on bidding, but it looks like neither of those factors have been affecting the bidding to date. That suggests to me that Ergen is more likely to have imposed an overall dollar cap, which could perhaps be as much as $8B to $10B each, before the 25% discount on the PWBs that each DEs is expected to receive.
A plausible bidding strategy for each DE, which requires no communication after the auction starts (and seems to roughly accord with what happened after DISH likely switched to the unpaired spectrum in Round 17), could then be something like:
Bid in every round until you see high activity in the unpaired spectrum (a sign that DISH has switched away from the AWS-3 blocks), then defend what you have, no matter what the price of each license. When you reach the overall dollar cap, drop the G block licenses first, then the H and I blocks, but keep the J blocks.”
So now the question is whether, with a weekend to think about it, AT&T and Verizon decide to leave Ergen holding the J-block licenses in major cities. Is there a point at which DISH becomes so financially stressed by the burden of spending perhaps $15B on spectrum, that it is in a weaker position after the auction than it was before (e.g. with insufficient resources to bid for T-Mobile or build out its spectrum)?
Does it matter if AT&T and Verizon are unable to deploy as much AWS-3 spectrum in major cities as they wanted? How much leverage can they exert at the FCC if DISH fails to build out these licenses? And should AT&T or Verizon force up the price of the unpaired spectrum to a level which puts the Ergen-led LightSquared reorganization plan in jeopardy? We’ll see in the next few days whether AT&T or Verizon are able to play Ergen at his own game.
UPDATE (11/23): Thinking further about the end-game, it looks to me like the mysterious spin-off of DISH’s spectrum, mentioned briefly by Ergen in the Q3 results call, is the likely way forward if one of the DEs is successful in acquiring a large block of spectrum. DISH could inject its existing spectrum assets into this entity and raise debt against the combined spectrum portfolio. Then (given the FCC rules against selling DE spectrum for at least 5 years), DISH would have a standalone entity it could spin-off to shareholders, and could lease or all of its spectrum holdings to the major operators, just like Grain Management.
UPDATE (12/1): Round 38 saw another apparent “tell” from DISH with the bidding on the New York I block: 2 new bids were submitted for a price of $1.316B, when the identical H block could have been secured for only $1.235B. Its implausible that either Verizon or AT&T would have bid for the I block at this price unless they already held the H block and wanted to double up. But equally well, its impossible for both of them to already be holding the H block, and only the holder of the H block would want to bid a higher price than necessary for the I block. So the only logical scenario under which 2 bids could have been submitted for the I block is if DISH holds the H block and both its DEs were bidding to add the I block, potentially sending a “signal” to AT&T and Verizon that DISH is determined to capture both blocks (and preserving eligibility for both DEs for when the FCC moves to the second stage of the auction). Note also that a similar single bid in Round 40 for the New York H block (after several rounds with no bids) was followed by a double bid in Round 41 (albeit at a lower price than the I block).
If we go back a few rounds then we can see many instances of these paired bids in New York, Los Angeles and a few other major cities. Until now I had assumed this simply to be a sign that DISH was competing with both AT&T and Verizon. However, now I think that quite possibly only one of AT&T and Verizon is competing very actively for the paired spectrum blocks. Most likely that would be Verizon (who can put AWS-3 to use more quickly as supplementary downlink for its AWS-1 holdings), with AT&T perhaps switching to the unpaired uplink B1 block, where DISH appears to be facing unexpectedly intense competition.
Notably, we can also see that there were two bids for the New York J block in Round 36 (after 1 bid in Round 35 and 2 bids in Round 34), followed by a single bid in Round 37 and no other bids thereafter. That sequence may indicate that Verizon finally forced DISH to relinquish the J block in Round 37. However, the fact that DISH’s DEs both appear to have enough eligibility to still be bidding for such a large license (when only one could be the winning bidder in any round) at that stage also suggests that DISH must hold a very significant share of the major city licenses. So the question now is just how far Verizon will need (and is prepared) to go in order to capture the remaining licenses it wants to secure.
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