In a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, the document revealed that AT&T Inc has acquired the LTE spectrum from Verizon Wireless. The acquisition deal was valued at USD1.9 billion. Also agreed in the deal was Verizon Wireless's acquisition of 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum licenses for 5 states namely Los Angeles, Fresno, Phoenix, Portland and Albuquerque.

The deal was eight months in the making since both companies agreed on principle last January of this year. According to IT news site ZDNet, the US telecommunications giant's acquisition of the 700MhZ spectrum was part of its LTE or next generation deployment, which is currently ongoing. The use of the LTE spectrum would enable the company to increase LTE coverage to over 15% by the end of 2013. The LTE deployment would be completed by summer of next year. Once completed, AT&T's improved LTE services would cover 42 million customers across 18 states in the US.

The transfers of assets were approved by the US Federal Communications Commission on September 3.