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Sprint poised to crush rivals’ spectrum holdings with Clearwire buy

Published Dec 18th, 2012 7:28PM EST
Sprint Spectrum Holdings

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Although Sprint (S) CEO Dan Hesse has in the past fought against consolidation of spectrum holdings in the wireless industry, he’s not nearly as concerned when it’s his own company doing the consolidating. As Quartz points out, Sprint is now poised to dominate mobile data spectrum holdings in the United States with its plan to fully acquire wireless broadband wholesaler Clearwire (CLWR).

In fact, Quartz writes that the Clearwire acquisition would give Sprint “a mind-boggling 184 MHz of spectrum, which is more than AT&T (77MHz) and Verizon (83MHz) combined.” It also likely means that AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) would both likely grown even more aggressive in their efforts to acquire spectrum either through acquiring other wireless companies or through crafting spectrum licensing deals with incumbent spectrum holders.

On the plus side, however, this means that Sprint customers can expect to have top-notch LTE services in the future since having more spectrum means having more bandwidth to use.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.