Qualcomm announced Monday that it will sell its Lower 700 MHz D and E block spectrum licenses to AT&T for $1.925 billion.

Qualcomm is currently using the spectrum for its FLO TV digital mobile TV business, but announced in July that it will shut that service down. The company said today that that shutdown will occur by March 2011. AT&T said it will use it as a supplemental downlink for its 4G network via carrier aggregation technology.

"This technology is designed to deliver substantial capacity gains by enabling unpaired spectrum to be used in conjunction with paired spectrum," AT&T said.

Qualcomm will integrate carrier aggregation tech into its chipset roadmap to handle increased consumer demand for bandwidth-heavy media content. AT&T said it will deploy this technology and begin using the spectrum it purchased Monday once compatible handsets and network equipment are developed.

The spectrum covers about 300 million people, including 70 million people in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

"This is a positive outcome for Qualcomm and our stakeholders," Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, said in a statement. "Carrier aggregation, supplemental downlink and LTE multicast technologies are an exciting evolution of next generation wireless systems to economically support increasing consumer demand for mobile TV and other rich media content. We will continue to drive the development and delivery of these new capabilities, which build on our technology leadership and deep experience with 3G, 4G and broadcast technologies."

AT&T and Qualcomm expect the deal to close in the second half of 2011, pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice.