AT&T Plans to Quickly Deploy 3.45 GHz Spectrum From EchoStar
AT&T will be able to deploy the 3.45 GHz spectrum that it plans to buy from EchoStar almost immediately after regulators clear the purchase, said Jenifer Robertson, AT&T's general manager of mass markets, at a Citi financial conference Thursday. AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches said at a Bank of America conference that the company was immediately interested in the spectrum when it became clear that EchoStar might sell some of its large portfolio.
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AT&T agreed to pay EchoStar $23 billion for 3.45 and 600 MHz spectrum in a deal announced last month (see 2508260005). Executives from Verizon (see 2509030027) and T-Mobile (see 2509050035) said they weren’t interested in the EchoStar spectrum.
The 3.45 GHz spectrum is something that “we can deploy within our network as soon as we get regulatory approval,” Robertson said. “We have set this deal up such that we can pre-lease it and deploy it with a very fast software upgrade and essentially start using it right away.”
Robertson said having more spectrum allows AT&T to further accelerate its decommissioning of its legacy network. It also “allows us to compete for price-sensitive customers with fixed wireless and a plus wireless converged play,” she said. AT&T has been making a major push to retire its copper lines, which it says cost $6 billion annually to operate (see 2502260021).
Desroches said that at the start of this year AT&T wasn’t expecting to make a major spectrum purchase before 2027 and the next major auction. “As fate would have it, you had a set of events that really unfolded over the last two or three months that really presented a unique opportunity.” He noted that the FCC had leaned on EchoStar to deploy some of its spectrum to serve consumers. EchoStar reached out “to see whether or not there was interest in any of their spectrum holdings.”
While the 3.45 GHz spectrum has gotten the most attention, both executives said the carrier was also interested in adding more low-band spectrum.
Low-band spectrum “is always good to have,” Robertson said. “We're in a good position today, and that sets us up … for the future.” AT&T sees lots of use cases for the spectrum, including the expanding IoT and AI, she said.
AT&T was surprised EchoStar was willing to sell its 600 MHz licenses, Desroches said. “You don't get that opportunity very often.” Robertson noted that AT&T now plans to spend $23 billion to $24 billion on its network this year, as a result of financial incentives in the reconciliation package, compared with previous guidance of $22 billion to $23 billion, which provides additional money to deploy the low-band spectrum.
Robertson said AT&T anticipated a tighter subscriber market, which the industry is now seeing. “We said coming into this year that the industry is healthy, it’s growing, but that the growth rate would moderate post-COVID,” she said. AT&T also expected downward pressure as a result of Trump administration immigration policies, which were already factored into AT&T's outlook for the year, she said.