Now that the merger is officially off of the table, it’s apparent that T-Mobile, the Nation’s 4th largest, and scrappy, carrier has made out like a bandit. As winner of the big consolation prize, Magenta is about to get a bit beefy in the 4G dept. AT&T’s transfer application has recently surfaced on the FCC’s website and for the first time throughout the acquisition process we can see exactly what T-Mo is about to gain. The sharp folks over at GigaOM managed to get one of their spectrum policy guru’s, Andrew Shepherd to prep a map showing what airwaves T-Mobile is picking up. The lucky carrier managed to snag some valuable licenses in vital markets in addition to some pretty hefty AWS holdings that belonged to AT&T. Markets include; Boston; San Francisco/Oakland; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Baltimore; Atlanta; San Diego; Seattle; Kansas City, Mo.; San Jose, Calif.; San Antonio; and Salt Lake City. Knowing they gave up some prime market spectrum, that’s definitely going to be a thorn in AT&T’s side for while. According to GigaOM:
AT&T is launching its LTE over both 700 MHz and AWS frequencies, and in all of the biggest cities, AT&T only gave up spectrum where it had enough 700 MHz backfill to get at least a decent-sized LTE network up and running, Shepherd said. In some big cities AT&T will only have enough 700 MHz to launch networks half the size of Verizon’s current LTE setup. But AT&T will be able to boost its capacity considerably when it moves to LTE-Advanced, incorporating the new 700 MHz spectrum it bought from Qualcomm. In the biggest markets such as Chicago, AT&T wouldn’t part with any of its AWS licenses even though it had other spectrum to fall back on.
In conclusion, T-Mobile is about to expand its 4G network for the better thanks in part to the generosity of AT&T’s failed acquisition agreements. I guess we can thank Sprint, the DOJ and the FCC while we’re at it. Magenta is gaining some frequencies from some pretty important cities, such as 60 MHz and 80MHz of joined AWS and PCS airwaves. This is great for T-Mo users as they see their current markets expand with great HSPA+ 42 mbps coverage.
[via GigaOM]