AT&T To Purchase FLO TV Spectrum, Promise "Advanced 4G Mobile Broadband"

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Coming as an interesting follow up to the announcement that FLO TV was shutting down — Qualcomm will be selling the wireless spectrum to AT&T. The deal is for $1.925 billion and is is said that it will “bolster AT&T’s ability to provide an advanced 4G mobile broadband experience for its customers in the years ahead.”

Bottom line, this means AT&T customers will have some good mobile broadband to look forward to using. Sadly though, this is not going to be a quick process where they flip a switch and AT&T users are surfing at super high speeds. According to the press release announcement;

“The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and AT&T and Qualcomm anticipate closing the sale during the second half of calendar year 2011.”

So yea, the deal is not even going to close for at least six months from now. Moving on though, and focusing on the positive side as opposed to the waiting and speaking in terms of how AT&T plans on using this spectrum.

“As part of its longer-term 4G network plans, AT&T intends to deploy this spectrum as supplemental downlink, using carrier aggregation technology. This technology is designed to deliver substantial capacity gains and is expected to be enabled with the completion of 3GPP Release 10.”

With that, we can also tell you that the spectrum covers over 300 million people across the US of which 15 million of those are in the 5 of the top 15 metropolitan areas.

“12 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D and E block spectrum covers more than 70 million people in five of the top 15 U.S. metropolitan areas — New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco; 6 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D block spectrum covers more than 230 million people across the rest of the U.S.”

In the meantime, those still enjoying their FLO TV will be able to do so until March 27, 2011. And remember, if you were/are a FLO TV customer you may have a rebate coming to you because of the pending service shutdown.