Of the $44.9 billion spent on spectrum in the FCC's most recent auction, about $29 billion was purchased by Verizon and AT&T.
Verizon Communications said it bought 181 licenses for $10.4 billion, which are in markets covering about 61 percent of the U.S.
AT&T shelled out $18.2 billion for "a near nationwide contiguous 10x10 MHz block of high-quality AWS-3 spectrum."
T-Mobile, meanwhile, spent about $1.8 billion, but Dish was the third highest bidder at just under $13 billion (it will only pay about $10 billion thanks to a small business deal with the FCC), according to Fierce Wireless. US Cellular also spent about $338 million.
AT&T will use its new spectrum as "a supplemental downlink to deliver additional mobile Internet capacity and better performance for its customers." AT&T expects to deploy this spectrum in the 2017-2018 period.
"Growth in our customers' mobile data usage continues to explode, driven by mobile video traffic. This spectrum investment will be critical to AT&T staying ahead of customer demand and facilitate the next generation of mobile video entertainment," John Stankey, chief strategy officer at AT&T, said in a statement.
The terms of this particular auction, which covers 65 megahertz in the AWS-3 band, require winners to share some of the spectrum with federal government users in particular geographic areas.
AT&T said today that it "will work with the FCC, NTIA, DOD, and other federal agencies to also support uplink capacity as soon as possible."
In total, 31 bidders won 1,611 licenses, the FCC said. Consumer group Public Knowledge was quick to point out that the biggest carriers once again dominated the auction.
"Many are celebrating today's auction as a 'game changer' for the wireless industry and a fantastic success. But once we get over the dollar signs we find that not much has changed," said Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge.
"While encouraging that T-Mobile and other smaller wireless carriers continue to fight to stay in the wireless game, they did not win nearly enough spectrum to challenge the dominant position of AT&T and Verizon," he continued. "Meanwhile, the two biggest carriers proved once again that they can and will pay whatever it takes to keep their dominant spectrum position in the market."
There has been talk about restricting the amount of spectrum a company can purchase in the upcoming incentive auction, currently scheduled for 2016. Not surprisingly, that has troubled Verizon and AT&T, the latter of which has threatened to pull out of the auction altogether if it can't bid on what it wants.
The auction bidders are unable to comment further at this point because of the FCC's anti-collusion quiet period, which ends on Feb. 13 at 6 p.m. ET.
The full list of winning bids is available on the FCC website.