My spin on the proposed US $39B merger of ATT and TMO is that ATT primarily gets to sell iPhones to a 40M customers that didn’t have access to it directly, and can add the TMO PCS 1900MHz and AWS 2100MHz spectrum in ATTs existing portfolio of 700MHz/850MHz/1900MHz/2100MHz. The additional sites are only a minor part of the interest from ATT. The CEO De La Vega mentioned today that the AWS would be used for LTE, thus the current HSPA+ (HSPA Evolution) use of AWS would cease and users would need to ensure their device could be updated to see 3G at 1900MHz, and/or replaced to do that and use LTE at 2100MHz.

Remember, Verizon played the 700MHz spectrum auctions very well and avoided having to deal with the lower 700MHz interference initially, has consistent channels/bands everywhere and gets to start with 10MHz channels at a pretty good price. ATT was not so tuned into this opportunity and has more variable 700MHz spectrum. At the moment they are purchasing Qualcomm’s unpaired upper D/E block chunks but that wont be useful for a while.

This is also more good for Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson for upgrades but less good in the long run for Nokia-Siemens.

More to come as is revealed…

Links: TMO & ATT via mobileizeeverything.com