FCC Approves Verizon’s $1 Billion Spectrum Purchase From Array

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2026 – Federal regulators approved Thursday Verizon’s $1 billion spectrum purchase from Array Digital Infrastructure.

Array, formerly UScellular, was the fifth largest wireless carrier in the U.S. before selling its operations to T-Mobile and chunks of spectrum to each of the three major carriers. Verizon is purchasing Array’s AWS-3, AWS-1, and PCS licenses covering about 8 percent of the U.S. population.

The Federal Communications Commission already approved the Array’s spectrum sale to AT&T, also for $1 billion, and its $4.4 billion sale to T-Mobile, which include both its more than 4 million customers and about a third of its spectrum, last year. Another $103 million spectrum sale to T-Mobile is still pending at the agency.

"We thank the FCC for recognizing the public benefits of this deal. The additional spectrum will allow us to better serve our customers as we continue to bolster our already robust network," Kathy Grillo, Verizon's senior vice president of government affairs, said in a statement.

Rural wireless carriers and consumer groups had opposed the deals, fearing excessive spectrum consolidation among the big three carriers would reduce competition.

Like it did in approving the previous deals, the FCC said in its order Thursday it wasn’t convinced about competitive harm. The agency wrote that it gave more weight to Verizon’s argument that its speed and capacity would be boosted where it acquired the airwaves, which the agency saw as “likely resulting in broader network deployment and improved indoor use and benefiting critical infrastructure.”

“Given the current levels of spectrum attributed to rival service providers and the fact that additional spectrum will be auctioned off in the near future, we find it unlikely that the acquisition of spectrum by Verizon Wireless in this transaction would allow it to foreclose entry, raise rivals’ costs, or otherwise harm the public interest in the local markets at issue,” the agency wrote.

The Rural Wireless Association had also expressed concerns about losing the roaming agreements they had with UScellular, which they said were critical to their business, and asked the agency to tack on conditions if it did approve the Verizon deal. The group asked the FCC to require Verizon to divest Array’s spectrum in some areas and to mandate reciprocal roaming deals. 

The agency declined both requests.

In a statement RWA counsel Carri Bennet said the approval, along with the approval of AT&T's $23 million purchase of EchoStar spectrum this week and the previous Array deals, "collectively amount to the death of mobile wireless competition."

The group said increasing spectrum consolidation was making it harder for rural carriers to compete, and that the major carriers "act in conscious parallelism to raise prices and copy offerings."

“Declining Universal Service Fund support and mounting barriers to spectrum access are effectively forcing [rural carriers] to abandon facilities-based operations and shift toward mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) or hybrid-MVNO models simply to sustain service to rural customers,” Bennet said in a separate statement Tuesday night. “RWA urges the Commission to initiate a rulemaking process to examine the current MVNO marketplace and to promote robust resale competition that can better serve rural America.”

Update: This story was updated to add comment from RWA.