Auction of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS-3) Licenses; Filing Requirements, Minimum Opening Bids, Upfront Payments, and Other Procedures for Auction 113

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <SUBAGY>47 CFR Parts 1 and 27</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[AU Docket No. 25-117; DA 25-1075; FR ID 323537]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Auction of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS-3) Licenses; Filing Requirements, Minimum Opening Bids, Upfront Payments, and Other Procedures for Auction 113</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final action; requirements and procedures. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) summarizes the procedures, deadlines, and upfront payment and minimum opening bid amounts for the upcoming auction of 200 Advanced Wireless Services licenses for spectrum in the Federal Communications Commission's inventory in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands (AWS-3 bands). This document provides details regarding the procedures, terms, conditions, dates, and deadlines governing participation in Auction 113 bidding, as well as overview of the post-auction application and payment processes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applications to participate in Auction 113 must be submitted before 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on February 11, 2026. Upfront payments for Auction 113 must be received by 6:00 p.m. ET on April 8, 2026. Bidding in Auction 113 is scheduled to start on June 2, 2026. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">General Auction 113 Information:</E> FCC Auctions Hotline at (888) 225-5322, option two; or (717) 338-2868. <E T="03">Auction 113 Legal Information:</E> Valerie Barrish or Yasiman Montgomery at (202) 418-0660. <E T="03">AWS-3 Bands Licensing Information:</E> Madelaine Maior at (202) 418-1466 or Jeffery Tignor at (202) 418-0774. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's document ( <E T="03">Auction 113 Procedures Public Notice</E> ) in AU Docket No. 25-117; DA 25-1075; adopted and released on December 18, 2025. The complete text of this document, including attachments and any related documents, are available on the Commission's website at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-1075A1.pdf</E> or by using the search function for AU Docket No. 25-117, on the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) web page at <E T="03">www.fcc.gov/ecfs.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities, send an email to <E T="03">FCC504@fcc.gov</E> or by call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Introduction</HD> In the <E T="03">Auction 113 Procedures Public Notice,</E> the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), jointly with the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB), establishes the procedures to be used for Auction 113, the auction of 200 Advanced Wireless Services licenses for spectrum in the Commission's inventory in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands (collectively, the “AWS-3” bands). Auction 113, which marks the Federal Communications Commission's (Commission) first auction since its authority to use competitive bidding lapsed in 2023, will bring unused, valuable 5G-ready spectrum to market, and proceeds will fund the Commission's ongoing efforts to protect American networks from untrustworthy and insecure foreign equipment. Bidding in Auction 113 is scheduled to commence on June 2, 2026. Auction 113 will be conducted using an ascending clock auction with a supply of one in each category of frequency-specific channel blocks, referred to as the “clock-1” auction format. The <E T="03">Auction 113 Procedures Public Notice</E> provides details regarding the procedures, terms, conditions, dates, and deadlines governing participation in Auction 113 bidding, as well as an overview of the post-auction application and payment processes. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Background and Relevant Authority</HD> The Commission is offering licenses in Auction 113 pursuant to the Spectrum and Secure Technology and Innovation Act of 2024 (Spectrum and Secure Technology and Innovation Act). The Spectrum and Secure Technology and Innovation Act directs the Commission to initiate a system of competitive bidding under 47 U.S.C. 309(j) to grant licenses for spectrum in its inventory in the AWS-3 bands as of December 23, 2024. <E T="03">See</E> Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, Public Law 118-159, Div. E, Title LIV, §§ 5401-5405, § 5403. Auction proceeds will support the Commission's Supply Chain Reimbursement Program, which implements the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 by reimbursing eligible advanced communications service providers for their costs to remove, replace, and dispose of Huawei Technologies Company or ZTE Corporation equipment and services obtained on or before June 30, 2020. On March 11, 2025, in accordance with 47 U.S.C. 309(j)(3), OEA and WTB released the <E T="03">Auction 113 Comment Public Notice,</E> 90 FR 13117 (March 20, 2025), seeking comment on certain competitive bidding and other various procedures to be used in Auction 113. Ten parties filed comments in response to the <E T="03">Auction 113 Comment Public Notice,</E> and six parties filed reply comments. One commenter recommends that funds from spectrum auctions and licenses be strategically and primarily directed towards expanding rural Tribal cellular services and communications infrastructure support on Tribal lands rather than for incumbent reimbursement. No parties commented on this recommendation. Even if this recommendation did not conflict with Congress's express direction for the Auction 113 proceeds, the use of auction proceeds is outside the scope of this proceeding on auction procedures as well as outside the scope of OEA's and WTB's delegated authority. The Commission's rules and decisions provide the underlying authority for the procedures OEA and WTB adopt for Auction 113. As specified in 47 CFR 27.1105, any auction of licenses for spectrum in the AWS-3 band is to be governed by the bidding procedures set forth in 47 CFR part 1, subpart Q. The Commission has also adopted rules regarding the AWS-3 bands, as well as the licensing and operating rules that are applicable to all 47 CFR part 27 services. <E T="03">See 2014 AWS-3 Report and Order,</E> 79 FR 32366 (June 4, 2014). On July 24, 2025, the Commission adopted the <E T="03">2025 AWS-3 Report and Order,</E> 90 FR 36385 (August 4, 2025), in which it updated the designated entity provisions of the 47 CFR part 27 rules that had applied to the Commission's first auction of AWS-3 spectrum in 2014. One commenter requests that OEA and WTB adopt an accelerated two-year buildout deadline for Auction 113 winning bidders because it claims that doing so will favor bidders with the financial capacity, operational readiness, and technical sophistication to promptly deploy service as well as discourage “speculative bidding.” Four commenters oppose this request. The Commission adopted buildout rules for the AWS-3 bands in the <E T="03">2014 AWS-3 Report and Order,</E> and any amendments to those rules require a rulemaking proceeding and cannot be made in the context of establishing the procedures for Auction 113 because such action is outside the scope of OEA's and WTB's delegated authority. Prospective applicants should familiarize themselves with the 47 CFR part 1, subpart Q rules, including amendments and clarifications thereto, as well as Commission decisions regarding competitive bidding procedures, application requirements, and obligations of Commission licensees. In addition, applicants must be thoroughly familiar with the procedures, terms, and conditions contained in the <E T="03">Auction 113 Procedures Public Notice</E> and any future public notices that may be released in this proceeding. The terms contained in the Commission's rules, relevant orders, and public notices are not negotiable. OEA and WTB may amend or supplement the information contained in their public notices at any time, and may issue public notices to convey any new or supplemental information that may generally apply to applicants. Pursuant to the Commission's rules, OEA and WTB also retain the authority to implement further procedures during the course of this auction. It is the responsibility of all applicants to remain current with all Commission rules and with all public notices pertaining to Auction 113. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Description of Licenses To Be Offered in Auction 113</HD> The AWS-3 spectrum available in Auction 113 will be licensed on a geographic area basis. Of the 200 licenses offered in Auction 113, the 48 licenses located in the A1 block (1695-1700 MHz), B1 block (1700-1710 MHz), H block (1760-1765/2160-2165), I block (1765-1770/2165-2170), and J block (1770-1780 MHz/2170-2180 MHz) are based on Economic Areas (EAs) and the 152 located in the G block (1755-1760/2155-2160) are based on Cellular Market Areas (CMAs). The AWS-3 frequencies will be licensed in five and ten megahertz blocks, with each license having a total bandwidth of five, ten, or twenty megahertz. The list of licenses to be offered in Auction 113 is available in the Attachment A file on the Auction 113 website at <E T="03">www.fcc.gov/auction/113.</E> One commenter requests that Block G be redefined using county level geographic areas for Auction 113, rather than on a CMA basis, as specified in 47 CFR part 27. However, implementing such a change would require an amendment to the Commission's part 27 rules that must be adopted in a rulemaking proceeding. A Commission rule cannot be amended in the context of this proceeding establishing the procedures for A ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 246k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━