AT&T To Purchase $1.9 Billion Of 700MHz Spectrum From Verizon

AT&T plans on paying rival mobile operator Verizon $1.9 billion for  licenses covering spectrum in the 700MHz B band in 18 states. The spectrum to be purchased covers 42 million people living in California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Together with 700MHz B band spectrum already owned by AT&T, the carrier hopes to finish building out its 4G LTE service. The nation's second largest carrier has a goal in place to blanket 300 million people with its 4G LTE service by the end of 2014. As part of the transaction with Verizon, AT&T will sell a single AWS license to Grain Management while leasing 700MHz spectrum from them in three markets.

The entire deal requires regulatory approval, which means someone in the U.S. government is getting a nice lunch. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year.


Source: AT&T

Is T-Mobile using 1900 band to test there 84Mbps HSPA+ deployment?

Ever since T-Mobile launched 3G service in 2008, it's used AWS exclusively — the 1,700MHz band auctioned by the FCC in the middle of the last decade — while keeping its legacy 2G services confined to the 1,900MHz PCS band. That might change, though, as the carrier looks to keep pushing on HSPA+ to deliver ever-higher 4G-like speeds in the absence of a clear LTE plan (and the absence of an AT&T acquisition). T-Mobile has already lead the way on deploying 21 and 42Mbps HSPA+, but the 3G roadmap doesn't end there: 84Mbps networks are a reality and the chipsets exist, it's just a question of securing the bandwidth to deploy it.

To that end, TmoNews noticed through HowardForums that unlocked iPhones connected to T-Mobile are picking up spots of 3G service in a few locations. What does that have to do with anything? The iPhone doesn't support AWS at all — the only band T-Mobile is known to be using for HSPA+ so far — which means that the carrier appears to be testing HSPA+ on its 1900 holdings, a prerequisite to deploying dual-carrier 84Mbps service. The site points out that most of T-Mobile's recent smartphones support 1,900MHz 3G, and this would explain why.

For owners of unlocked iPhones (and other unlocked devices that don't support AWS) on T-Mobile, this is potentially great news: in the long term, you might be able to move around the country and pick up a fair bit of 3G service. Meanwhile, it seems likely that we'll see the carrier deploy branded modems and handsets before too long that take advantage of 84Mbps HSPA+