FCC gives AT&T permission to purchase Qualcomm’s spectrum in the 700 MHz band

Several years ago Qualcomm picked up some key spectrum in the 700 MHz band that they wanted to put to good use by offering a mobile television service called MediaFLO. The goal was to make handset vendors want to start building MediaFLO compatible devices, thus Qualcomm would make an infinite amount of money by having a monopoly on the MediaFLO technology. It was a solution to a problem no one had, and thus their mission failed. Hard. So hard in fact that if you ask anyone working at Qualcomm about their views on MediaFLO, they’ll just sigh and stare at the ground for a few moments. Anyway, to recuperate the money that was lost on the failed venture, Qualcomm announced their intent to sell their 700 MHz spectrum to AT&T for a cool $1.9 billion. That announcement was 12 months ago. Since then a lot has happened, most notably AT&T’s failed attempt to acquire T-Mobile, which forced AT&T to give away upwards of $4 billion worth of assets to T-Mobile thanks to an unprecedented breakup clause that was put in place if the deal between the two companies fell through.

So back to the spectrum, what’s AT&T going to do with it? No surprise here really, they’re going to use it to roll out 4G LTE. Both AT&T and Verizon use the 700 MHz band for their respective 4G LTE networks because of the fantastic characteristics that come with any sub 1 GHz bands. Namely the ability to use fewer cell towers to cover a particular amount of land, and the ability for said low frequencies to penetrate through walls. It’s rather odd then that Verizon announced earlier this month their intent to acquire AWS spectrum, meaning spectrum in the 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands, to expand their 4G LTE network. But that’s a whole other topic.

The key question is of course how fast can AT&T roll out 4G LTE?

[Image above is of AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega | Credit: mocoNews]