Bloomberg REALLY Wants AT&T to Buy Somebody → Re: Key problem is spectrum

Ok AT&T needs more greenfield spectrum which is a fact. How much will buying Dish move them from 80% of the country?

Well, the Qualcomm already covers the whole country, but it's only 6mhz, the DISH spectrum would give them 12mhz nationwide, all unpaired, but that's at least a start, especially considering they already have paired SMH or AWS in all the major markets, so it would largely be filling in coverage, not capacity. It would also be a much better use of the spectrum than DISH owning it, as they're not going to do anything with it.

I'm in the situation where if I wanted to I could switch from AT&T to VZW. Will AT&T be able to catch up to VZW in quality of LTE and coverage?

Not directly. But the combination of LTE and HSPA+ may be VERY compelling. Remember, in more rural/exurban areas, AT&T's HSPA+ is insanely awesome, and in the urban areas, they do, by and large, have the spectrum to deploy LTE. However, for straight up LTE, Verizon is going to DOMINATE.