UScellular to sell select spectrum assets to AT&T for $1.018B

United States Cellular (NYSE:USM) has agreed to sell a portion of its retained spectrum licenses to telecom giant AT&T (NYSE:T) for total consideration of $1.018B.

The agreement includes the sale of 1,250M MHz-Pops of 3.45 GHz and 331M MHz-Pops of 700 MHz B/C block licenses. Some of the licenses being sold to AT&T (T) are owned by a third party.

The transaction follows the deals previously announced last month to sell a portion of the retained spectrum licenses to Verizon (VZ) and two other mobile network operators. It is part of the objective UScellular (USM) announced in May this year to opportunistically monetize the spectrum that was not included in the proposed sale to T-Mobile (TMUS).

Following this transaction, as well as those previously announced, UScellular (USM) will have reached definitive deals to monetize around 55%, measured on a MHz-Pops basis, of the spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave) that were excluded from the proposed sale to T-Mobile, for a total consideration of ~$2.02B.

Including the proposed T-Mobile transaction, UScellular will have reached agreements to monetize ~70% of its total spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave). “After our proposed sales, we 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,” said Laurent C. Therivel, president and CEO of UScellular.

Substantially all of the transaction is contingent upon the closing of the sale of the UScellular wireless operations and select spectrum assets to T-Mobile (TMUS) and is subject to the receipt of regulatory approvals and satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

TDS, the majority shareholder of UScellular, has delivered its written consent approving the AT&T transaction.