AT&T Sets Spectrum Price, Buys Out Aloha

The remaining frontier is in the sky, as you might guess, and AT&T's buyout of Aloha's chunk of 700 MHz spectrum in advance of January's government auction is a strategic move to conquer that frontier.

AT&T announced today that they will pay about $2.5 billion for Aloha Partner's 12 MHz of spectrum, which covers about 196 million people in the United States, or 72 of the top 100 markets and all of the top 10 markets.

The company says demand for mobile services, like voice, data, and video spurred their interest in the spectrum, but the purchase may signal some swift strategy to get around the government auction, along with rules and rivals associated.

With the purchase, Media Access Project, which could mean that AT&T is hedging its bets.

Feld told Murdok,"Either it means AT&T has decided to chicken out of the auction and try to acquire the spectrum they want in the secondary market, or they're gearing up to be a major participant in the auction."

And in a way, it could mean both. The company grabs three-quarters of the spectrum it needs on its own terms for its own price, and grabs the remaining spectrum at auction to fill in the holes in coverage, which it has just set a price on.

Pretty shrewd, wouldn't you say?

We'll have to wait until January to find out for sure, though. AT&T couldn't comment on whether or not they plan to participate in the auction. But that would seem like an awful waste of lobbying money, and a waste of all the effort sassing Google.