I believe this was previously posted, but around 1943-1944 IBM joined with some other businesses to get a microwave carrier license for a postwar transcontinental network. IBM intended to use it for high speed data transmission (remember, this was 1944!) and perhaps television broadcasting.
(As reported by the New York Times. There was about one hour nightly of commercial television service in those days (WW II years) , I don't know how many sets were in use at that time (anyone know?). There was also FM radio, but on different frequencies than used later. I'm pretty sure postwar TV and FM transmissions were somewhat different than what was used during the war years. A search on the keyword "television" of the on-line NYT index finds a surprising great many references during the war years; technical schools were training people and industry was gearing up to manufacture components.)
I don't know what became of that application and plans. IIRC, after WW II the FCC wasn't sure what to do with microwave channels and a number of businesses sought licenses, some for private use, some for common carrier use. Stuff dragged for a while. There were legal debates about common carrier status. I don't think IBM did anything further in data communication until the 1950s (during the war, it did have radio teleteypwriters for the army it developed).
As an aside, in the early 1980s with deregulation coming up, many people expected a big clash between IBM and AT&T as their respective worlds collided. That was a major cover story often in the trade press. It never came to pass. While IBM made modems and bought Rolm telephones and AT&T bought NCR computers, they never became fierce competitors as predicted. Indeed, both companies found it tough to survive in the new world and had to change drastically. On the inside, IBM is a very different company than it was back then. They had to get out of a 1950s consent decree to do so