Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
LR Mobile News Analysis  

Could Sprint Be Next to Sell WCS Spectrum?

August 02, 2012 | Dan Jones |

Could Sprint Nextel Corp. be the next operator to sell AT&T Inc. WCS spectrum?

UBS AG analyst John Hodulik suggests that Sprint could make around $130 million selling off its remaining WCS licenses to AT&T. Ma Bell filed to buy WCS licenses in the 2.3GHz band from Comcast Corp., Horizon Wi-Com and NextWave Wireless Inc. Thursday.

"The main holder of the remaining A & B WCS licenses is Sprint Nextel, with an average of 1MHz of coverage in the top 100 markets (2MHz nationwide)," the analyst writes in a research report Thursday. "Using a valuation of $0.22 MHz/POP estimate for the NextWave deal, we estimate Sprint could garner ~$130M in proceeds were it to sell its WCS licenses."

Hodulik states that AT&T could be going after a ubiquitous 10x10MHz spectrum channel for LTE in the 2.3GHz band with this slew of WCS deals. AT&T expects to deploy on WCS within three years and reach 40 percent of its footprint within four years.

Why this matters
A WCS deal could give Sprint much needed extra-cash for its own "Network Vision" 3G and 4G overhaul. Much around the WCS deals though still hangs on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); it hasn't approved the spectrum for 4G services.

For more

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile


Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Application Programing Interface (API)
An interface that allows different elements of software to more easily communicate with each other