AT&T gained early access to the 3.45 GHz mid-band spectrum licenses it’s in the process of acquiring from EchoStar in a $23 billion deal (that also includes 600 MHz low-band licenses) to help ramp up its 5G download speeds by a significant margin.
Impact: A short-term spectrum lease management deal between the two companies while they await approval on the spectrum sale gave AT&T a head start on integrating the 30 MHz of 3.45 GHz spectrum it’s buying into its 5G wireless network, and the company made quick work deploying those licenses. As Fierce Network noted, AT&T CEO John Stankey previously said AT&T would move fast to deploy the spectrum and cover two-thirds of the U.S. population while doing so. That effort included deploying the spectrum to nearly 23,000 cell sites in just weeks, which the company called “record fast” deployment. According to AT&T, it has upgraded its network, which just recently transitioned to a standalone 5G core, with the new licenses in more than 5,300 cities throughout the continental U.S. The company also said that the additional spectrum will increase its 5G download speed by as much as 80% for mobile customers and up to 55% for customers subscribed to its Internet Air fixed wireless product, leading COO Jeff McElfresh to proclaim that “We’ve put EchoStar spectrum to work on our network and customers are already feeling the difference.” The deployment will further enable AT&T to extend its Internet Air coverage to more locations, with the company specifically mentioning rural customers who don’t have access to fiber will soon be able to access its fixed wireless offering.
With AT&T already deep into a copper decommissioning projected to be complete by the end of 2029, the deployment of more mid-band spectrum should be good news for customers in the company’s legacy wireline areas. For those losing their non-fiber wireline service, AT&T will be able to deliver fixed wireless service with faster speeds and more capacity while customers in those areas wait to see if AT&T moves to deploy fiber to their address. AT&T said the deployment will accelerate its convergence efforts and spur long-term growth by extending its broadband footprint (made up of both FWA and fiber) to additional locations, making more advanced connectivity options available to more customers and potential customers. From a financial standpoint, the additional spectrum should help AT&T’s efficiencies over the long term because it won’t have to boost network capacity by building out new cell sites. AT&T also highlighted that the new spectrum will deliver more capacity for streaming, gaming, and AI-powered applications, the continued expansion of home Internet backed by its 5G network, and better ensure it can meet the connectivity commitments laid out in the AT&T Guarantee.
AT&T already had access to spectrum in the 3.45 GHz band after it won a significant number of licenses at auction in 2021, deploying those licenses over the last few years. A refresher on the auction results from Fierce noted that the only other bidder in that auction was EchoStar, though at that point it was known as Dish Network. But Dish had not deployed the licenses in its own burgeoning greenfield 5G network before it re-merged with EchoStar at the end of last year and has since pivoted away from building its own network after the FCC started investigating its spectrum use. Instead, Dish Wireless will operate as a hybrid mobile network operator on AT&T’s network offering service under the Boost Mobile brand. But while AT&T moved at record speed to deploy the 3.45 GHz licenses, it will take longer to deploy the 600 MHz low-band spectrum into its 5G network, in part because the company doesn’t currently use that spectrum, making the deployment more complicated. While the low-band spectrum will enable AT&T to extend its 5G coverage farther, the mid-band licenses driving faster 5G mobile and FWA speeds will make the most difference for customers.
AT&T claims to have invested more money in telecom infrastructure than any other company over the past five years, including both T-Mobile and Verizon. The new spectrum licenses appear to be a way to deliver on its promise to be the “best connectivity provider in the nation,” with the most reliable (based on a RootMetrics ranking) and largest wireless network in North America, a claim based on a comparison of carrier owned and operated networks. According to CNET, there’s no sign that the faster speeds generated by the additional spectrum will result in rate increases, but prices could rise in the future to help pay for the company’s network investments.
