Markets Affected by the CBRS Consent Decree July 26, 2022 10:30

Last week the FCC announced a consent decree with SAL Spectrum, Cable One, NorthWestern Corporation, U.S. Cellular Corporation, and Shenandoah Cable Television. Each of these carriers was a winning bidder in the CBRS auction and they each have Black Rock, Inc. as an owner holding more than 10% interest. Because of the common ownership, these collective companies should have been limited to 40MHz of spectrum in the auction. There are 80 license areas (counties) where the collective group exceeds 40MHz. To identify those counties, we can use Spektrum Metrics Insights' Spectrum Ownership Analysis Tool to display side by side, each of the affected carriers spectrum holdings for each band, including the CBRS band. Summing up the CBRS holdings and filtering for values greater than 40 provides the identity of each county involved in the consent agreement. Below is a table representing a subset of that analysis.

Below is a mapping highlighting all of these markets.

We have included maps below from our Web Spectrum Viewer that reflect the h CBRS auction winnings for each of the collective carriers prior to the consent decree.

Atlantic Tele-Networks (SAL Spectrum):