AT&T has now announced that it has finalized its acquisition of $23 billion worth of spectrum licenses from EchoStar. The transaction was announced back in August of last year.
AT&T paid all that money for an average of approximately 50MHz of low-band and mid-band spectrum that covers “virtually every market across the US”, more than 400 in total. There’s 30MHz of 3.45GHz mid-band spectrum in there as well as 20MHz of 600MHz low-band spectrum.
The move will significantly boost AT&T’s 5G capacity and download speeds while also helping the company “deliver an AI-ready connected experience as it engineers the spectrum to enhance the superior uplink capabilities of its wireless network”, the official press release states.
As a result of this transaction, AT&T expects to “accelerate and expand” the availability of its Internet Air service, that delivers home internet service via the company’s wireless network. Thus, it can transition more customers from legacy copper-based phone and internet services, both in areas where it plans to eventually deploy AT&T Fiber and in those where it doesn’t.
