UScellular named AT&T as the buyer for some of its spectrum in an all-cash deal valued at $1 billion, its latest move involving the assets following a $4.4 billion arrangement with T-Mobile US in May and a deal with Verizon last month.

When Verizon struck its $1B deal, UScelluar stated it had agreements with two other mobile operators for additional licence sales.

AT&T is stated as the fourth operator to announce a spectrum deal with UScellular, although the rural operator is not revealing the identity of the other player.

The agreement with AT&T involves the sale of 1,250 million MHz-POPS of 3.45GHz and 331 million MHz-POPS of 700MHz B/C Block bands.

AT&T stated the UScellular spectrum will increase its “5G wireless network capacity in more than 100 markets across virtually every region of the country”.

UScellular stated some of the licences being sold to AT&T are currently owned by a third party, with their sale “contingent upon UScellular’s purchase, which is pending receipt of regulatory approval, of the equity in the third party that UScellular does not currently own”.

Those licenses cover approximately 15 per cent of the total MHz-POPS in the transaction with AT&T.

UScellular noted “substantially all” of the transaction with AT&T also hangs on UScellular closing its agreement with T-Mobile, which the companies aim to do by mid-2025.

Laurent Therivel, president and CEO of UScellular, noted once the proposed sales are complete it “will be left with 1.86 billion MHz-POPS of low- and mid-band spectrum, as well as 17.2 billion MHz-POPS of mmWave spectrum, with the substantial majority of retained value in the C-band spectrum”.

Telephone and Data Systems (TDS) owns an 83 per cent stake in UScellular, which was the fourth largest US mobile operator prior to selling some of its spectrum. The Carlson family owns the majority of TDS.

The boards of UScellular and TDS announced they were considering the partial sale of some of the mobile operator’s assets in August 2023.