AT&T to Buy Qualcomm’s Spectrum for $1.93 Billion

AT&T, the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone carrier, agreed to buy wireless spectrum from Qualcomm for $1.93 billion as customers increasingly use bandwidth-hogging services such as video downloads.

The spectrum, in the lower 700 megahertz frequency band, covers 300 million people in the US. AT&T gets about 12 MHz spectrum of Lower 700 MHz D and E block spectrum in – New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia and 6 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D block spectrum in rest of the country. Chipmaker Qualcomm had acquired the spectrum for its mobile-TV service, which it plans to shut down in March. AT&T is upgrading its third-generation network to allow for higher speeds while it works on building out its fourth- generation network to debut next year. Larger rival Verizon Wireless turned on 4G service earlier this month.