AT&T advances C-Band rollout with spectrum bump

AT&T doubled the amount of C-Band spectrum available for deployment after two satellite companies cleared it for use by mobile operators, enabling capacity and data rate increases.

A representative told Mobile World Live (MWL) network performance in some cities will improve over the coming months as AT&T continues to roll out its licensed C-Band spectrum by an average of 80MHz in each market.

It now has access to a minimum of 100MHz of mid-band spectrum in the contiguous US and an average of 120MHz nationwide.

“That’s bandwidth in every available city, 406 locations in all,” the representative stated.

AT&T began using C-Band spectrum in 2022 after several delays due to airline industry concerns over interference.

Its deployments of mid-band spectrum including a combination of C-Band and 3.45GHz spectrum currently covers more than 175 million people.

Equipment deployed including radios are capable of handling the full bandwidth spectrum load once software updates are completed.

AT&T’s representative told MWL it retuned C-Band equipment previously deployed in 46 locations to provide faster data rates and increased capacity.