Sale of Chicago Market Was Painful for U.S. Cellular, CEO Says
U.S. Cellular sold a large part of its Midwest wireless business, including its Chicago property, to Sprint in 2012, because of an inability to buy more spectrum there, CEO Kenneth Meyers said Tuesday during a presentation at a Deutsche Bank…
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financial conference. U.S. Cellular is based in Chicago, where the company had only 20 MHz of spectrum. “We had been to about every auction trying to augment that position and we weren’t able to get it,” he said. “There’s just no way that we could have gone to LTE … from where we were on 20 MHz. The network was full and we weren’t going to be able to grow it any further.” Selling the market was “painful” but a “business decision,” he said. U.S. Cellular has been reluctant to move from CDMA to voice-over-LTE on its current network until it better understands how to make sure that customers will have an equal or better experience, Meyers said. “What we do know is that CDMA is a wonderful voice technology -- it has great, great coverage,” he said.