AT&T has sought to lease more 3.45GHz spectrum after filing to lease the spectrum from N Squared.

In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as noted by Anthony Jones on X, AT&T has sought to lease 55 spectrum licenses in the 3.45GHz band from Northwood Ventures-backed N Squared.

The filing for the spectrum comes a day after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said he expects the upcoming spectrum auctions to generate $100 billion over the next couple of years.

AT&T noted in its filing that it plans to deploy the spectrum via radios already installed across its cell sites.

The company said it can "substantially boost network throughput" with more unpaired mid-band spectrum, which it claimed would improve speeds, reduce latency, and allow it to serve more users at the same time.

As part of AT&T's agreement with N Squared, the carrier would lease the spectrum across 25 states and would gain roughly 20MHz of additional midband spectrum in most markets, but in three markets (Sarasota, Florida; Nampa, Idaho; and Bryan, Texas) it would get fully 40MHz, as pointed out by Mike Dano, lead industry analyst, Ookla.

There were no financial terms noted in the filing, while the lease remains subject to approval from the FCC.

Such a deal would add to the 3.45GHz spectrum assets that AT&T has already snapped up from EchoStar as part of a $23 billion deal, which was finalized over the summer. The carrier has already gotten to work on deploying this spectrum.

That particular deal, which was first announced in August of last year, has added approximately 30MHz of nationwide 3.45GHz mid-band spectrum and approximately 20MHz of nationwide 600MHz low-band spectrum to AT&T’s spectrum holdings.