Sorry AT&T, Verizon just wanted it more...

WMGroomAK · May 11, 2017

Back in April, AT&T had announced that they were planning to acquire Straight Path Communications for $1.6 Billion in order to get a hold of their 39 GHz and 28 GHz licenses in the US as a part of their path to deploy a 5G network. Today, it has been announced that Verizon just wanted those 5G license a bit more and decided to outbid AT&T for the purchase of Straight Path Communications to the tune of $3.1 Billion. According to Ars Technica:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/verizon-outbids-att-for-nationwide-5g-spectrum/

Quote

AT&T announced its own $1.6 billion acquisition of the company on April 10, saying that Straight Path "holds a nationwide portfolio of millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum, including 39GHz and 28GHz licenses," and that this spectrum will support development of AT&T's 5G wireless network. Straight Path's 735 licenses in the 39GHz band and 133 licenses in the 28GHz band "cover the entire United States, including all of the top 40 markets," AT&T said last month.

AT&T initially said that it expected to close its purchase of Straight Path within 12 months, but rumors that Verizon would try to outbid AT&T quickly began to circulate, culminating in the deal reported today. Verizon hasn't publicly announced its purchase of Straight Path yet. We've contacted the company and will provide an update if we get one.

UPDATE: Verizon announced the acquisition minutes after this story published, saying the deal will close within nine months, pending FCC review. "Verizon now has all of the pieces in place to quickly accelerate the deployment of 5G," Verizon said.

Straight Path, which had only nine employees as of October, "acquired most of its wireless spectrum more than 15 years ago but was penalized this year by regulators for failing to build a working network," the Journal wrote.

This would appear to give Verizon a good foothold for being able to deploy a millimeter spectrum 5G network over the next couple of years... But that is some serious cash to drop to outbid AT&T.

http://www.techspot.com/news/69279-verizon-outbids-att-straight-path-nationwide-5g-spectrum.html