Following the FCC’s approval last week, AT&T announced Tuesday that it has finalized its acquisition of Qualcomm’s 700MHz spectrum licenses. The spectrum, which was previously used for Qualcomm’s FLO TV product, covers more than 300 million United States residents. AT&T said it paid Qualcomm approximately $1.9 billion in the deal. “This spectrum will help AT&T continue to deliver a world-class mobile broadband experience to our customers,” said AT&T SVP-Federal Regula...

The Federal Communications Commission announced on Monday that it will review AT&T’s planned $1.925 billion acquisition of Qualcomm’s FLO TV lower 700MHz frequency band at the same time that it reviews the carrier’s T-Mobile USA merger. AT&T announced its intentions to buy spectrum from Qualcomm in December of last year and said it planned to deploy the spectrum as “supplemental downlink” while it built out its 4G network. That acquisition was originally expected to close...

If you’re looking forward to the possibility of flip-flopping your smartphone’s SIM card between a Verizon Wireless 4G phone and an AT&T 4G phone, we have some bad news for you. Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Raney confirmed to PCMag on Friday that the carrier’s 4G LTE phones will not be compatible with AT&T’s 4G LTE network because the phones “run on different frequencies.” PCMag explained that while the two carriers operate within the 700MHz frequency band, ...

The FCC today announced that it will hold an auction on July 19, 2011 for sixteen licenses in the 700MHz spectrum. The government agency has two licenses that operate in the 698-704MHz and 728-734MHz frequencies (Block A) along with fourteen licenses that operate in the 704-710MHz and 734-740MHz frequencies (Block B); all sixteen licenses have a 2 x 6MHz pairing and 12MHz of bandwidth. The 700MHz spectrum is currently what wireless providers AT&T and Verizon Wireless are using to build out their 4G, L...

The fourth largest carrier in the US (behind AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) is in the midst of putting up a big fight against the FCC. T-Mobile, along with the support of AT&T and CTIA, contends that the AWS-3 spectrum the FCC is auctioning off will interfere with the AWS-1 spectrum that T-Mobile uses. If startup M2Z networks wins the auction, it plans to use the space to make mobile WiMax nationally available – and free. The FCC asserts that the technology available will override any possible interf...