Some of you may remember earlier this year, when T-Mobile bought a huge chunk of 700MHz spectrum from Verizon. Well since that acquisition, they’ve been looking to grab more of that spectrum from various regional carriers that are holding onto it. They are now looking to grab some more 700MHz spectrum in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Texas. These recent filings are pointing towards T-Mobile attempting to scoop up some more 700MHz spectrum from McBride Spectrum Partners LLC in the western Pennsylvania counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington and Westmorland. Also from David Miller, who is an individual spectrum holder, and has 700Mhz spectrum in New Mexico and a few counties in Texas new El Paso.
According to a few analysts, the McBride transaction would cover nearly 3 million POPs, and the David Miller transaction would be around 900k POPs. Now remember POPs aren’t customers, but the number of people in the area. Basically a theoretical high of how many customers T-Mobile could have in that area.
Lately, T-Mobile has been moving. Between their CEO John Legere and CTO Neville Ray, they’ve made several other deals to get 700MHz spectrum from various others. And now the 700MHz spectrum they hold covers about 18 million POPs. Which you can take a look at the map down below to see where that spectrum is, that also includes pending acquisitions. This doesn’t count the biggest deal, which was with Verizon. Verizon’s spectrum is said to cover about 158 million POPs. So T-Mobile is definitely getting a lot of low-band spectrum right now which will really help with their coverage and especially building pentration. As their CEO, John Legere has been up-front about their network not being perfect. But it definitely looks like that’s a big goal of his to fix. And I like that.