TORONTO, Nov. 24 -- AT&T Canada has won licenses to a substantial portion of the country's wireless broadband spectrum, which will enable the company to expand its local, national and long-distance fiber-optic network. AT&T Canada's successful bid of $7.9 million Canadian dollars (US $5.2 million) allowed the company to acquire 400 megahertz in the 24-GHz spectrum range. US telecom AT&T owned 31 percent of AT&T Canada until August 1999, when British Telecommunications PLC purchased 30 percent of that holding.
The company acquired licenses in each of the 21 mid-sized markets it had targeted. AT&T Canada described the markets in question as being either on the outskirts of its local fiber networks, or in areas passed by its broadband long-haul fiber network where the costs of building local fiber networks were prohibitive. According to AT&T Canada, the unbundled loop prices in these 21 markets are generally higher than in the downtown centers of Canada's largest cities, where the company has already constructed extensive local fiber optic networks.