Sprint and AT&T Exchange Spectrum in Several Areas

Mobile phone carriers AT&T and Sprint have reportedly exchanged some spectrum in several areas in the US, including some parts of Colorado, Oklahoma and Florida. It seems that the swap has already been approved by FCC, and Sprint unveiled in the recent 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would receive $59 million from AT&T as a result of the deal.

Said deal includes some spectrum in Oklahoma City, where AT&T already had to perform spectrum exchanges two times before, FierceWireless notes, “first as a condition of its merger with Cingular Wireless four years ago and then in 2007 as part of its acquisition of Dobson.” According to AT&T, FCC should approve the acquisition of spectrum in the area because its previous deals do not prevent this and because the competition in the market is strong. The carrier stresses the fact that other operators also own spectrum in Oklahoma City, including Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, US Cellular and Clearwire.

“The spectrum swap mentioned in the Q is of a type that has been a common practice in the industry – carriers trade/sell bits and pieces of spectrum to each other in areas where a carrier has an excess of capacity,” Sprint spokesman James Fisher stated, as reported by FierceWireless. “In this case, the transaction involved the exchange of some Sprint 10 MHz licenses in Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Kalamazoo, Pueblo (CO), Bend (OR), Routt County (CO) and Grand County (CO) for AT&T's 5 MHz license in Tampa, 2.5 MHz license in Knoxville and some cash.”

As for AT&T, the company states in the FCC filing that the additional spectrum will offer it the possibility to increase its capacity and to enhance existing services. In addition, the operator says that it would also enable it to “better accommodate its overall growth, and facilitate the provision of additional products and services to the public in the areas of Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. [It] will also facilitate AT&T's continued deployment of GSM/EDGE and HSDPA/UMTS technologies.”