Amid pandemic, T-Mobile gets emergency access to Dish’s 600MHz spectrum

Enlarge / Headquarters of T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom in Bonn, Germany. (credit: Getty Images | Construction Photography/Avalon )

T-Mobile will borrow spectrum in the 600MHz band from Dish, Comcast, and other companies to boost mobile bandwidth during the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Communications Commission yesterday granted T-Mobile temporary authority to use the spectrum for the next 60 days.

T-Mobile already has 600MHz-band licenses throughout the United States from a spectrum auction in April 2017. In that auction, T-Mobile spent $8 billion for 45 percent of the available spectrum, amounting to an average of 31MHz in each market. Dish spent $6.2 billion in that auction while Comcast spent $1.7 billion.

T-Mobile uses its 600MHz spectrum for both 4G and 5G. But unlike the millimeter-wave spectrum that has factored heavily into early 5G deployments, 600MHz is low-band spectrum that is suitable for covering large, sparsely populated areas.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments