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AT&T To Pay $1.93 Billion For FLO TV Spectrum

Posted by Soulskill on from the saturate-this dept.

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."

5 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. The end. by adolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And this, friends, represents the end of the glory that should have been the giant swaths of 700MHz spectrum which were liberated as part of the move from NTSC to ATSC.

    RIP, dreams.

    --
    Kid-proof tablet..
    1. Re:The end. by adolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Channels 52-83 were owned by TV stations for their exclusive use, and now the frequencies have been leased to a singular Cell carrier for use by that carrier's customers. How is this a bad thing? Looks like a net positive to me.

      There. Fixed that for you.

      (Please realize that I draw my opinion from the fact that, once upon a time, nobody owned any airwaves but the people -- and that the initial concept of outside ownership was a transfer of rights from the people to corporations, not between corporations. They are inherently our airwaves, not those of whom are represented by a stock ticker.)

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    2. Re:The end. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I love when jackasses like you with no sense of social structure make comments like that. I'm sure later on, when your job ends up overseas, you will be whining about how the government wasn't protecting the citizens enough, while the same person saying that right now, you would be calling a jingoist moron calling for isolationism.

      I've seen people yawp about that, "hey, I don't give a shit where the goods are made, as long as I can have my 20 pack of tube socks for $1.99 at Wal-Mart." Then they wonder why they don't get pay raises, their company goes into hiring freezes, or the company gets shut down, stomped by foreign competitors whose sole advantage is that they have a cheaper workforce. Not skilled, mind you. Cheaper.

      Do you REALLY want to live in a country where its government's goal is to be economically competitive to any and all comers in the world? I sure don't. The US went through days of 12 hour workdays, 7 days a week in the Gilded Age, and those were for the children. Do you want to live in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle?" Most people sure don't.

      The rhetoric you spout is spewed by two types of people in the US: The genuinely rich (and don't count yourself as that unless you are doing 7 digits worth of dollars a year), and those who have not completed a high school education, have little to no knowledge of basic economics or civics, and are just toeing the line on the far right propaganda machine.

      Does that Brawndo taste good?

  2. Actually 4G? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is it real 4G or that marketing bullshit 4G?

  3. Re:One of the reasons for the failure was due to D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the major problem is nobody wanted it. If the issues had been primarily technical, you'd have heard lots of people protesting that they tried it and it sucked. The problem is that you didn't hear anyone complaining about it at all...