Last week, the Federal Communications Commission officially granted licenses for the 600 MHz spectrum that T-Mobile secured in the recent spectrum auction. The carrier announced their plans last Thursday to begin testing the first 600 Mhz sites as early as this Summer, and plans to have the first commercial 600 MHz sites online later this year when the new 600 MHz capable smart phones are expected to become available.
The carrier won approximately 45% of all spectrum in the FCC’s auction earlier this year, spectrum that was previously utilized for television. Their total auction haul included approximately 31 MHz in the 600 MHz band at a cost of nearly $8 billion, the company’s largest investment ever. Although television broadcasters have 39 months from the close of the auction to turn over those licenses to their new owners, the turnover has been occurring far ahead of schedule.
In the announcement, T-Mobile stated they expect to have more than 1 million square miles of 600 MHz spectrum clear and ready to for deployment by year end. In addition to helping expand existing LTE network capabilities to meet the growing demand for high speed data, T-Mobile said last month they also intend to use some of their 600 MHz band spectrum to establish a nationwide 5G network.
