4G spectrum, soon to be part of 5G Spectrum

The spectrum is whatever they could get from the FCC in the USA. They get it from the spectrum auctions that the FCC holds. There is always a need for more although some carriers have yet to deploy all of what they have. With 3G they could use smaller swaths of bandwidth. 4G changed that, and 5G will only make them want more. 

Spectrum is tough to show because there is 4G spectrum for auction here in the USA. I realize that spectrum goes to the highest bidder, (in my opinion small businesses suffer). However, the rush to get spectrum has diminished by the carriers learning to make the most of the existing spectrum. While the bands are small, they have been using something called carrier aggregation to combine spectrum bands to look like one big pipe, which is awesome. The OEMs have worked to put together 2 or more bands so that they look like one big band making the end user happy with more throughput.

In the USA, there are many bands. 

•710 to 716MHz paired with 740 to 746MHz used by AT&T 

•746 to 757MHz paired with 776MHz to 787MHz used by Verizon Wireless 

•806 to 866MHz and 869MHz which belongs to Sprint, this is the old Nextel band. 

•1710 to 1785MHz and 1805 to 1880MHz is T-Mobile AWS spectrum. 

•1850 to 1990 MHz is Sprint FDD spectrum. 

•2.5GHz to 2.7GHz is Sprint TDD spectrum. 

•More and more, it would take some time to break them all out. So much spectrum is out there, and the carriers are grabbing what they can.