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AT&T To Pay $1.93 Billion For FLO TV Spectrum
itwbennett writes "AT&T on Monday announced it is buying from Qualcomm $1.925 billion worth of wireless spectrum that it plans to use for a 4G network. The spectrum was bought by Qualcomm for $125 million and had powered FLO TV."
LTE supports 81.6Mb/s and 200 active data clients on a 5MHz channel, using 4x4 MIMO, 43.2Mb/s with 2x2 MIMO. Not quite as bad as you let on here. Obviously, if you had 200 data users on a cell, they're not all getting the high speed they're after... but no different than the 3G situation -- about 21Mb/s via HSPA or 56Mb/s with HSPA+ (2x2 MIMO and 64QAM).
AT&T has actually been buying up 700MHz spectrum for years now. Along with the national Block B 12MHz they bought at FCC Auction 73, they own up to 12MHz of Block C from some of these other purchases... I hadn't realized they bought Aloha Partners sometime back in 2007. So that's up to 24MHz in some areas, even before you factor in this new 6MHz block. LTE doesn't support more than 20MHz per channel, but in aggregate, AT&T may have up to 480Mb/s of LTE per cell. Not too shabby.
Verizon has been doing much the same thing... they spent $4.7 billion for the national 700MHz Block C (and a few licenses in Block A as well) they won in Auction 73, 22MHz wide. And another $4.66 billion buying up 700MHz spectrum owned by regional companies... no idea just how much, or where. But both companies are well situated for 4G, and clearly, the scarcity of this commodity is driving the price up. This has Verizon with up to 90MHz of aggregate spectrum in places (3G + 4G), over 45MHz through most of the country.
It'll be interesting to see if Echostar hangs on to their 6MHz Block E ($722 million), given they could better than double their money on it now. And the FCC still plans to run the Block D auction again, probably next year (Block D has to be shared with public service use).
-Dave Haynie