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FCC Approves AT&T's $1.9 Billion Qualcomm Spectrum Purchase

Posted by Soulskill on from the who-needs-tmobile-anyway dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has granted approval for AT&T to buy Qualcomm's wireless spectrum licenses for $1.925 billion. The FCC admitted to having some 'competitive concerns' about letting AT&T snap up such a large swath of spectrum licenses, but were satisfied by simply imposing a number of conditions to prohibit interference on neighboring bands. They also said the deal facilitates their goal of 'expanding mobile broadband deployment throughout the country.'"

13 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. So... by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So... what does this mean for consumers? Better AT&T coverage? Cheaper wireless? Somehow I get the feeling the opposite is going to happen...

    1. Re:So... by Kenja · · Score: 5, Funny

      At a guess, it means 1.925 billion dollars of hidden fees spread out across all the AT&T users.

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    2. Re:So... by jc42 · · Score: 2

      It presumably also mean an extension of some of the industry's crappiest "customer support" to that part of the spectrum.

      What I wonder is: Where is Lily Tomlin when we need her?

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    3. Re:So... by Linsaran · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The plan is that they'll be able to provide better LTE based mobile broadband. But then no plan ever survived contact with the enemy.
      If you want cheap wireless, you're not using one of the big 4 companies anyways. If you want better coverage, well voice coverage is probably already about as good as it's gonna get, the costs to provide coverage to the 1% of people who aren't already saturated are proportunately not worth the return, and Data coverage is more focused on providing faster speeds in key markets with LTE than providing even '3g' speeds in the fringe areas where it's not saturated.
      Frankly the spectrum is why AT&T wanted t-mobile in the first place, and since that deal fell through this is the next best thing for them.

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    4. Re:So... by dokebi · · Score: 3, Informative

      The spectrum is about 6MHz wide across the country, and 12MHz in NY, Boston, Philly, SF, and LA, in the 700Mhz band. Because of the narrow channel, this spectrum is most likely to deploy LTE (4G) networks outside these areas. It would possible to deploy 3G networks on this spectrum in those four areas, but I would guess not because 4G is more spectrum efficient than 3G.

      So, unless you have an LTE phone, it wouldn't improve your coverage.

      Verizon has been very aggressive in buying larger, contiguous chunks of spectrum (>10Mhz wide) in the last decade, even if they had to pay more money to get them. T-mobile got some (that's why ATT wanted to buy them), but AT&T often sat out (or was out bid). Based on just that, I would guess Verizon's coverage would be better for the next decade.

      In fact, I have noticed AT&T has a history of under investing in their infrastructure in the last decade. Instead of planning ahead, they defer infrastructure upgrades until the last minute, which costs more but get less return (or no return, in the case of T-mobile acquisition). YMMV.

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    5. Re:So... by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Frankly the spectrum is why AT&T wanted t-mobile in the first place, and since that deal fell through this is the next best thing for them.

      Frankly I don't think that's true. Spectrum is what they need, but the dominant market position is what they want. The T-Mobile acquisition would have made them the largest carrier overnight for a paltry $30B and given them the spectrum they needed to boot, while this $1B deal gives them spectrum for less than the penalties on the T-Mobile deal falling through. I think it's a clear indication that spectrum was *not* the primary motivation for their attempted buyout, but we all knew that.

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    6. Re:So... by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 2

      What I wonder is: Where is Lily Tomlin when we need her?

      Sadly, her job was outsourced to Bangalore many years ago.

  2. We had concerns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "We had concerns about AT&T not competing, but when we realized how big the bribes they paid us and our appointing politicians were, we decided to let the deal go ahead anyways"

  3. Hello again... by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 2

    Ma Bell! You were gone for quite a while.

    --
    There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
  4. Whining by DaMattster · · Score: 2

    Now, AT&T can quit whining or lying about not having enough spectrum to build out its LTE network. I'd never give AT&T a dime of my money even if their network was faster than T-Mobile's. Simply on principle alone, I will be staying with T-Mobile for some time to come.

  5. Re:AT&T & CDMA? by dokebi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The spectrum was called MediaFLO, owned by Qualcomm to deploy digital TV. ATT will be repurposing it for LTE (4G) only, which is the same technology used by both CDMA or GSM carriers as their next generation technology. In 4G (real 4g, not the marketing 3G+ stuff) all carriers are using the same technology.

    This means with 4g, US may get phone compatibility from different carriers finally. It might take them a while, though, as LTE only phones wouldn't exist for another 5-6 years.

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    In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
  6. Re:AT&T & CDMA? by fred911 · · Score: 2

    The spectrum can be used for any allocated protocal. Cdma, lte, gsm.. ect. The object is to use the most effective and accepted method.

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  7. Makes more sense than the original plan. by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    Well now, this is a significantly cheaper way to get more spectrum than buying out T-Mobile. That is the reason why you said you needed to be allowed to buy them, right AT&T? Didn't you say that was the only way to deal with your lack of frequencies for all your customers? There was no other way?

    Good thing you had this second chance to approach the problem the find another solution. I'm sure you're happy with all the money you saved doing it this way, too.