AT&T and T-Mobile used to have a pretty good working relationship, to the point where AT&T had even announced their plans to acquire T-Mobile and merge both companies into a giant carrier. The deal was met by a lot of opposition and has since fallen through, and it looks like both companies’ relationship had tanked in the process as well. Now it looks like both companies will be competing with each other again, and not just for customers, but for spectrum as well. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it has been suggested that both AT&T and T-Mobile will be making a bid for a 700MHz “A block” of spectrum owned by Verizon.
This particular block of spectrum has the ability to send signals over a long distance and is able to do a better job at penetrating buildings, which we guess could be welcome by AT&T and/or T-Mobile customers who find that reception in buildings might not necessarily be ideal. Verizon has expressed interest in selling off the spectrum and stated that they will not be letting it go for anything less than $2.75 billion. It has been suggested that AT&T’s purchase of the spectrum would make more sense since it would play nicely with the carrier’s current network, as opposed to T-Mobile which uses frequencies of 900MHz.
Of course T-Mobile could have other uses for it, but as it stands it is unclear as to what T-Mobile might want to do with it. In any case we’ll have to wait and see what results from this, so check back with us at a later date for the details!