AT&T is said to be selling data centres, worth about $2 billion, while Verizon Communications is reportedly pushing through the sale of assets worth up to $15 billion – including tower masts and parts of its wireline business – in a bid to pay down debt.

News of the proposed sell-offs comes in the wake of heavy AWS-3 spectrum bidding by both AT&T and Verizon, which committed to pay $18.2 billion and $10.4 billion respectively for extra wireless frequencies nationwide.

Aside from lavish spending on new spectrum, AT&T has dug deep to pay for expansion into Mexico. The US wireless heavyweight recently announced a deal to acquire the Mexican business of NII Holdings – which trades as Nextel – for $1.9 billion less outstanding debt, shortly after completing its $2.5 billion acquisition of Iusacell.

AT&T’s proposed $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV, the US satellite provider, is also in the pipeline.

AT&T is, of course, no stranger to asset sales. The company sold its wireline operations in Connecticut to regional telephone operator Frontier Communications for $2 billion in late 2013 (in order to raise cash for network upgrades).

In a deal worth $4.85 billion in cash up front, AT&T agreed in October 2013 to lease around 9,100 of its wireless towers – and sell another 600 – to Crown Castle International. The arrangement might see the US operator eventually bag over $9 billion. As the leases expire – the average length is around 28 years – Crown Castle has the option to buy them for about $4.2 billion.

The Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter”, said that Verizon could announce its package of deals – involving different buyers for the various assets it has put up for grabs – by the end of this week.

Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, said in January that the company was open to selling assets in order to pare back its wireline service territory. “There are certain assets on the wireline side that we think would be better off in somebody else’s hands so we can focus our energy in a little bit more narrow geography,” he said.