AT&T wants to teach an old spectrum band new 4G tricks

A wireless band that the mobile industry has practically written off may get a new life as 4G spectrum if a new proposal from AT&T and Sirius XM gets regulatory approval.

The two strange bedfellows have submitted a joint filing to the Federal Communications Commission requesting permission to use AT&T’s long dormant 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Service (WCS) for an LTE network. Deploying any kind of service on WCS has been cluster-you-know-what for any operator that has made the attempt. AT&T and BellSouth, which was eventually acquired by Ma Bell, experimented with the band for years, launching trial pre-standard WiMAX networks in several markets. But neither company could make the technology work and were constantly running up against the protests of Sirius and XM, which themselves merged in 2008. But apparently these old antagonists have come to an accord.