AT&T to buy 700 MHz licenses in Northwest

AT&T is buying 24 700 MHz licenses in the Northwest from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to support its LTE rollout and meet demands for mobile services in the Northwest, according to an AT&T spokesman. Financial details were not disclosed.

The licenses include the cities of Seattle and Portland and will be sold through Vulcan Spectrum, Allen's license holding company. In an FCC filing, AT&T and Allen's Vulcan argued that the transaction would not cause "an aggregation of spectrum that would pose an anti-competitive risk." They added: "These post-transaction holdings will not exceed the commission's initial screen in any county, and thus no additional review of this transaction for competitive harm from a spectrum aggregation standpoint is called for."

AT&T and Verizon Wireless were the two largest winners of spectrum at last year's 700 MHz spectrum auction. Verizon has already begun testing LTE in its 700 MHz holdings.

For more:
- see Bloomberg
- check out this FCC filing

Related article:
AT&T buys $2.5B worth of 700 MHz