Although carriers’ spectrum deals don’t always make the news or generate big headlines, T-Mobile’s hunger for additional spectrum and its recent activity in that arena has drawn attention.
Impact: First things first: In Grain Management, LLC, T-Mobile appears to have finally found a buyer for the 800 MHz spectrum Dish Network (now EchoStar) had been expected to purchase a couple years ago. In exchange, T-Mobile will receive an undisclosed amount of cash as well as ownership of the 600 MHz licenses Grain had already loaned it once the deal closes, likely by the end of next month provided it gets through the regulatory process smoothly. Fierce Network reported that New Street Research analyst Philip Burnett valued the 600 MHz spectrum at $700 million, which indicates T-Mobile could end up with $3 million or so in cash under the terms of the deal. Grain plans to use the licenses to provide service to utility companies and other critical infrastructure industry operators as well as rural and regional operators or interested enterprise customers, working with Black & Veatch to market the services.
There’s one hiccup that could disrupt the deal, however. Grain will have to work quickly to get an extension on the buildout timeline assigned to the 800 MHz spectrum, which currently expires as of June 2028 for 97% of the licenses. Because that doesn’t give Grain enough time to build out a network and deploy the spectrum, the private equity firm has requested a 12-
year extension on the deadline that would start once the transaction becomes official. That would give Grain until 2024 to get equipment and chip vendors lined up and then give them time to build everything to specifications that work for utilities, which also need significant lead time to get approval from public utility commissions to operate broadband networks and then secure the capital needed to do so.
T-Mobile’s quest to offload the 800 MHz licenses acquired during the Sprint deal has taken several twists and turns over the past few years. Dish got first crack at the spectrum in 2023 under the terms of a provision in the 2020 T-Mobile-Sprint merger that turned it into a wireless carrier. But it couldn’t come up with the money, even after requesting and receiving an extension into 2024 that required a hefty down payment to cement its commitment to buy the licenses. When EchoStar failed to meet T-Mobile’s final deadline in April 2024 because it faced severe financial constraints, the FCC then required T-
Mobile to hold an auction for the spectrum and set a minimum price of $3.6 billion. Unfortunately for T-Mobile, that effort in the second half of 2024 also went nowhere, as several interested parties failed to meet the auction’s qualifying bid threshold. According to Fierce Network, T-Mobile then entered into one-on-one negotiations with Grain and finally managed to put a deal together that both sides found beneficial.
Elsewhere on the spectrum front, T-Mobile has been busy pursuing spectrum swaps from its two main rivals. According to FCC filings found by Airwave Research and cited by LightReading, T-Mobile has spectrum swaps involving a variety of spectrum bands in the works with both AT&T and Verizon. The trade with AT&T involves 700 MHz, AWS, and PCS licenses scattered around the country, while the Verizon deal mainly focuses on spectrum in Kentucky and features 2.5 GHz, 600 MHz, AWS, and PCS licenses. AT&T and T-Mobile said their swap will benefit consumers by giving each carrier more contiguous and adjacent spectrum across 238 counties. The rationale for the Verizon deal related to opportunities for additional speed and capacity improvements. T-Mobile will exceed the FCC’s spectrum screen limits in four areas after the AT&T transaction and in six areas with the Verizon transaction, but analysts don’t expect the FCC to undertake a deeper review of either deal. But that could change now that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has said the agency will consider the existence of companies’ DEI policies before approving deals.
The T-Mobile drive to acquire more spectrum doesn’t seem to ever stop, with the Grain transaction coming after news of the spectrum swaps broke. The carrier also has a deal in place that would enable it to potentially purchase some or all of Comcast’s 600 MHz licenses and spent $3.5 billion just a few years ago to buy 600 MHz licenses from Columbia Capital. The more spectrum T-Mobile acquires in its preferred bands, the harder it will be for its main rivals – much less smaller wireless players – to keep up. The title of spectrum collector may now go to T-Mobile as it works to bury the competition.
