AT&T Withdraws FCC Application to Acquire T-Mobile

Category: Mobile
Posted: November 24, 2011 07:27PM
Author: bp9801

Earlier this year, AT&T announced its intentions to acquire T-Mobile to help expand its cellular coverage. T-Mobile and AT&T are both GSM carriers while Sprint and Verizon are CDMA, so the T-Mo/AT&T merger made sense from a logistics standpoint. The problem is that those four carriers are the four major carriers in the US, and the elimination of one could be seen as the creation of an AT&T monopoly, something it had had before that lead to it being broken up. There has been some opposition to the merger, but AT&T sent its application to the FCC for approval. Well, on Tuesday, the FCC sent the merger to an administrative law judge for review and ordered AT&T to prove acquiring T-Mobile is in the public's best interest. Now, AT&T has withdrawn its application to the FCC, but intends to resubmit it later when it is more practical. AT&T is also fighting off an antitrust lawsuit brought on by the Department of Justice, so it looks like the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile is on thin ice.

• Email Link
• Print News

This news has comment postings disabled because it is now archived.