InformationWeek's Elena Malykhina reports today that T-Mobile has spent $4.2 billion bidding on wireless spectrum over the past three weeks in an attempt to compete with Cingular, Sprint and Verizon.

"Though the FCC set up the spectrum auction -- one of its largest in 12 years -- to give advantages to smaller telecom companies, the big vendors still dominated, filling holes in their national coverage," Malykhina writes. "T-Mobile bought 116 radio frequency spectrum licenses in the first 18 days of bidding."

Verizon came in second by spending $2.8 billion on four licenses. Sprint spent $2.3 billion for 133 licenses in a partnership with cable providers under the name SpectrumCo, and Cingular paid $1.3 billion for 49 licenses.

"The carriers aren't talking about what they'll do with the new spectrum," Malykhina writes. "But it's likely they'll use it to expand and improve voice service offerings rather than advancing wireless broadband or mobile TV, as the auction's Advanced Wireless Services moniker might imply. Dropped calls are still too big a problem for customers. They want carriers to fix those problems before promoting services based on next-generation cellular technology."