T-Mobile's AT&T prize in Spectrum shown clearly on map

This week it's being shown clear as day the amount of spectrum AT&T will have to hand over to T-Mobile after their planned merger falls through entirely. What you're going to see is a collection of areas and their associated MHz that AT&T currently has sway over but will be transferring to T-Mobile to amp up their own 4G network. This information comes from an FCC transfer application signed by AT&T and reveals the specific licenses T-Mobile will gain, here mapped out by spectrum policy reader Andrew Shepherd and so kindly shared with the entire world.

What you'll see here is that T-Mobile will not be getting a whole solid nation-wide map of pink but rather a selection of key cities that'll bump them up in the minds of consumers. The midwest is mostly empty except for the coolest places in Minnesota (your humble narrator's home stomping grounds) and essentially the whole southeast is forgotten about, but the western half of the states is pretty well covered. San Francisco, San Jose, Salt Lake City, and all the way back over to Washington DC, each of them will have a jump up in connectivity for T-Mobile customers in the very near future.

T-Mobile will have between 60 MHz and 80 MHz of combined AWS and PCS airwaves in the cities it's picked up in this transaction. This will allow T-Mobile to make its HSPA+ 42 Mbps footprint an equitable one in this ever-growing market, and those of you with the pink carrier will find yourselves amping up just so long as you live in one of these areas. Meanwhile AT&T will continue to jam out their relatively new LTE network in states that they did not give over to T-Mobile as well as the one's they did. Make no mistake, AT&T hasn't sacrificed any location they can't continue to cover otherwise – because that would just be silly.

[via GigaOM]