AT&T Says It Has Full Access to C Band

AT&T has access to all the C-band spectrum it bought in a 2021 auction, it said in an emailed statement Wednesday. The company, unlike Verizon (see 2308140051), didn’t post a public news release making the announcement. “With satellite companies finished clearing the remaining C-Band spectrum months ahead of the December 2023 deadline, we got early access to our full C-Band spectrum holdings -- doubling our available C-Band spectrum for deployment,” AT&T said: “We’ve since re-tuned our previously deployed C-Band in the original 46 locations … resulting in notable capacity and speed gains, and ultimately an enhanced customer experience with fast, reliable and consistent performance.” AT&T noted it’s deploying C band in combination with 3.45 GHz. “In the coming months, markets like Denver and Atlanta will see performance improvements as we continue expanding the deployment of our entire licensed C-Band spectrum -- an average of 80 MHz or more by market,” AT&T said. “Because our deployed cell site equipment, such as radios, are capable of handling the full bandwidth spectrum load, once a software update is completed, customers will immediately experience a dramatic increase in bandwidth,” the carrier said. AT&T said it has a minimum of 100 MHz of total mid-band spectrum throughout the contiguous U.S. and an average of 120 MHz nationwide. Verizon dominated the C-band auction, bidding $45.4 billion, almost twice the $23.4 billion bid by AT&T (see 2102250046).