TDS Withdraws Bid to Acquire Array
The company will hang on to its existing 82 percent stake
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2026 – TDS Telecom is calling off its acquisition of Array Digital Infrastructure, the company announced Tuesday.
TDS already owns about 82 percent of Array. TDS had proposed exchanging 0.86 shares of TDS stock for each Array share the company didn’t already own, but that evidently wasn’t satisfying for Array.
Despite extensive review on both sides, we were not able to reach agreement on the form of consideration and value,” TDS CEO Walter Carlson said in a statement.
The company said in its release that it would continue to hold its stake in Array, which Carlson had previously said the company would do if the deal fell through.
“We remain confident in Array’s business and long-term prospects and are committed to supporting Array’s continued success as a leading owner and operator of wireless communications infrastructure,” he said in his statement.
TDS stock was up more than 12 percent since Tuesday. The company said it would resume share buybacks and had $523 million available under its buyback program.
The company also said it would, along with Array, increase its efforts to sell Array’s remaining spectrum assets. Most of the remaining value is in C-band licenses.
Array sold $1 billion of spectrum each to AT&T and Verizon, and included a chunk of its licenses in T-Mobile’s $4.3 billion acquisition of its former wireless operations. It now operates its portfolio of more than 4,400 towers.
Array CEO Anthony Carlson, Walter Carlson’s nephew, said in May that the company didn’t see multiple upcoming spectrum auctions as reducing demand for its licenses.
“We continue to believe that the C-band spectrum we hold is excellent and valuable spectrum. It's a usable property today, with an ecosystem to support it,” he said. “We’re not going to be a forced seller in these circumstances.”
Based in Wisconsin, TDS offers wireline broadband across 30 states. It counts more than 1 million fiber passings.
