T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless today announced a deal whereby both providers will purchase and swap spectrum in the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band.
T-Mobile and Verizon said the deal will help boost their respective 4G LTE coverage.
The deal also includes spectrum that is part of Verizon's pending, $3.6 billion acquisition of spectrum owned by cable firms like Comcast, and a separate deal with Leap. As a result, the T-Mobile deal can only go through if regulators also approve Verizon's other pending spectrum deals.
In May, a collection of businesses - including T-Mobile and Sprint - joined together to form the Alliance for Broadband Competition, a lobbying group designed to block Verizon's purchase of the cable-owned spectrum.
In a statement today, the Alliance for Broadband Competition said that "while it's nice that Verizon will cede a small portion of its vast spectrum holdings to T-Mobile, that does nothing to mitigate the fact that Verizon and Cable want to stop competing, stop investing, and stop innovating to the great detriment of consumers and the American economy."
"Our position remains the same: we urge the DoJ and FCC to continue their thorough examination of these agreements to ensure a competitive telecommunications industry," the alliance said.
"This is good for T-Mobile and good for consumers because it will enable T-Mobile to compete even more vigorously with other wireless carriers," T-Mobile CEO and president Philipp Humm said in a statement. "We anticipate FCC approval later this summer, in time for us to incorporate this new spectrum into our network modernization and the rollout of LTE services next year."
T-Mobile plans to roll out its 4G LTE network in 2013, thanks in part to the AWS spectrum it gained from the failed AT&T merger deal as well as a $4 billion investment.
The AT&T deal provided T-Mobile with AWS spectrum in 128 cellular markets, including 12 of the top 20. T-Mobile said today that the additional Verizon spectrum will cover 60 million people in cities like Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle, Cleveland, Columbus, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro, Memphis, and Rochester.
For more, see PCMag's Fastest Mobile Networks 2012.