By ELLIOT SPAGAT, AP Business Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Qualcomm Inc. said Thursday that it will use the radio spectrum it won in a recent government auction to double the capacity of its mobile television service on swaths of both coasts.
The wireless chipmaker paid $554.6 million for the old UHF channel 56 in the Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco regions.
Qualcomm said the spectrum will give its MediaFLO USA service the ability to double offerings from Orange County, Calif., to Northern California on the West coast and from New Hampshire to Maryland on the East coast. MediaFLO will now have 12 megahertz of bandwidth in those areas, compared with 6 megahertz in the rest of the country.
The 6-megahertz network was designed to deliver up to 20 live streaming video channels, as well as audio channels and short video clips.
"It just allows us to substantially broaden and deepen the content," said Dean Brenner, Qualcomm's vice president of government affairs.
Satellite broadcaster Dish Network Corp. won the remaining channel 56 licenses in the country in a surprise, $712 million bid.
The auction winners were announced last month but they were barred from talking about their plans until Thursday, which was the deadline for down payments. A Dish Network spokeswoman did not immediately respond to phone messages Thursday night.
Qualcomm, based in San Diego, is best known as the world's largest maker of chips that power cell phones and for licensing its patented technology to other companies. More recently, it dived into mobile television, a business it says it may eventually spin off.
Verizon Wireless began offering Qualcomm's MediaFLO service last year and has reached 58 markets. AT&T Inc. plans to begin offering MediaFLO in May. The service features programming from CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.
The federal government is auctioning chunks of airwaves as it prepares to end analog broadcasts by Feb. 17, 2009. It is making all UHF broadcast spectrum above channel 52 available for new wireless services.
Qualcomm said it will use spectrum on UHF channels 53 and 58 to test new technologies. It paid $3.5 million for those licenses in Imperial County, Calif., Yuba City, Calif., and Hunterdon County, N.J., where Qualcomm has offices.
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