FCC Approves AT&T Purchase of WCS, Comcast Spectrum to Boost Its LTE

From DailyTech: In 1997 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission sold hundreds of spectrum licenses to AT&T, Inc. (T) and other carriers, raising $14.7M USD. The only problem was that the spectrum in question lay adjacent to Sirius XM Inc.'s (SIRI) satellite radio band, and it was feared that if AT&T made use of its new spectrum it would cause interference. Despite the fact that the FCC willingly sold the licenses to AT&T -- or other carriers which in turn sold it to AT&T -- it refused to authorize the use until Sirius XM and the carrier worked out a deal.

For over a decade that deal was never reached and the spectrum -- in the so-called WCS (Wireless Communications Service) band -- went unused.

But earlier this year Sirius XM and AT&T finally settled their differences after AT&T promised to set aside some of the spectrum to use as a "buffer" -- unused space between the two company's holdings, designed to prevent interference.

The FCC gave the deal its blessing in October, and AT&T was officially in the WCS game. It then closed a set of deals with Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and Horizon Wi-Com, a startup which rode the now-defunct WiMAX 4G standard, to acquire 608 more WCS licenses (enough spectrum to cover 82 percent of the population in 48).

Between the October and December approvals, AT&T now has a lot of spectrum on its hands to improve its service. But it will take a lot of work to do that. By AT&T's best estimate it will take "approximately three years" to fully leverage the new spectrum.

On the network side AT&T has to upgrade its base-stations; in some cases this may consist of a simple firmware upgrade, in other cases new hardware may be necessary to broadcast in the newly acquired chunks of WCS space.

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