Months ago Sprint made it clear it wasn’t going to bid in the 600MHZ spectrum auction when the FCC oversees the long-awaited sale. And last week the company reiterated its position on standing on the sidelines, according to lightreading.com.
“This auction is at best going to give a block of 2x10MHz spectrum,” Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati said at the Citi 2016 Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference. “For a really, really high-speed network you need at least 2x20MHz of contiguous spectrum.”
Broadcasters and their strong lobbying arm, the NAB, have continued to lean on the FCC to expand its 39-month window for conversion after TV outlets sell their spectrum, pressing for up to five years. The request for more time has reached carriers as Robbiati suggested, the spectrum won’t be available for use until 2021, reported lightreading.com. It added that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless also seem lukewarm on the 600MHz auction. All of which has led T-Mobile US Inc. ‘s CEO, John Legere, to suggest that his carrier will be a winner in the upcoming spring auction.
Robbiati also said Sprint will beef up its capacity by focusing on adding small cells, femtocells and distributed antenna systems (DAS), the CFO says.
“What we’re really working on is picking out the partners that we work with,” Robbiati says. He says that there are plenty of alternative vendors at CES that Sprint could talk to,” lightreading.com reported.
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