What is 2.5 GHz spectrum worth?

In July 2013, Sprint Nextel became sole owner of Clearwire and Sprint Nextel completed the sale of the majority of its stock to the Japan-based SoftBank Corp. Fast forward 30 months and it looks like Sprint is shutting down the clearwire mobile wi-max service to empty out its 2.5 GHz spectrum. Is it possible that Sprint, still majority owned by Softbank, and seemingly unable to make a profit, is planning to put chunks of its 2.5 GHz spectrum up for sale to the ever increasing list of cash-rich companies that are looking to build out or create wireless distribution networks. (Verizon, AT&T, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Comcast, Charter, etc.). Sprint continues to cut costs (2,500 jobs were eliminated in January) but analysts expect yearly earnings to come in as a $1.5 billion loss.

In the 2015 FCC mid-band AWS auction, the demand for spectrum was great enough that the winning bids for paired 10 MHz spectrum averaged about $2.72/MHzPop with the biggest markets getting bids over $6/MHzPop. At this rate Sprint's 2.5 GHz spectrum could be worth somewhere north of $20 billion.

In any case, in the short-term the FCC hopes that the low-band spectrum to be auctioned in the Broadcast Incentive Auction beginning at the end of March will be acquired by companies intending to move into markets that currently have little competition (often dominated by Verizon and AT&T) . This low-band spectrum is suited for coverage, as it can handle irregular terrain and other line-of-sight blocks (e.g. walls) much better than higher frequency rf, but will be maxed out in the next couple of years if current rates of increase of user data usage hold up, Sprint 2.5 GHz may turn to gold. We shall see.