T-Mobile has filed a lawsuit against a Florida school district to stop the school’s board of directors from selling two 2.5 GHz spectrum licenses.
An investment firm called WCO Spectrum offered to buy the two licenses from the St. Lucie County, Florida, school board for $7.6 million. Lucie, Florida, for $7.6 million, Lightreading reported.
But T-Mobile argues that the school board cannot sell the licenses to WCO for a variety of legal reasons, including because T-Mobile views WCO as a competitor.
The St. Lucie County district is spread over 39 schools and serves 40,000 students.
At stake are the 2.5 GHz spectrum licenses that underpin T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G network . Due to FCC regulations dating back to the 1960s, most of those licenses are not owned by T-Mobile.
Instead, they are owned by educational institutions such as universities, colleges, and religious organizations. To use the licenses for commercial applications like 5G, T-Mobile and its corporate predecessors like Clearwire and Sprint signed long-term leases on the licenses.
The St. Lucie County School District first signed its 2.5 GHz lease agreement with T-Mobile’s corporate predecessors in 2008 . The contract expires in 2038.
However, in an effort to straighten out these kinds of tangled deals, the FCC ruled in 2020 that educational institutions can sell their licenses; previously they were legally prevented from doing so. As a result, T-Mobile has so far purchased more than 200 of the estimated 2,000 total 2.5GHz licenses it leases.
In T-Mobile’s new lawsuit against the St. Lucie County school district, the operator argues that the terms of its lease with the school prevent the school from selling its licenses to WCO.
