AT&T has finalised its $1.9 billion acquisition of spectrum from Verizon Wireless, which will allow it to boost its 4G services in 18 states.

The deal, which was first announced in January, will see 39 licences for spectrum in the lower 700MHz band B block transferred to AT&T. The spectrum covers 42 million people in 18 states.

The agreement completes a spectrum sale process announced by Verizon Wireless in spring 2012 for its lower 700MHz spectrum licences. Seven companies signed license purchase agreements with the US number-one operator as part of this, five of which are small or regional operators.

The acquired spectrum will support the deployment of LTE by the US number-two operator as demand surges for mobile internet services.

The states covered are California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

AT&T’s LTE network covers more than 225 million people with 270 million expected to be covered by the end of the year. The build-out is due to be completed by summer 2014.

As well as the cash payment, AT&T also transferred 10MHz of AWS spectrum to Verizon in Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles and Fresno, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Portland, Oregan.

Also in January, AT&T agreed to pay $780 million to acquire wireless spectrum and assets from Atlantic Tele-Network, which operates under the Alltel brand.