Mergers & Acquisitions, Wireless Carrier | featured news

AT&T pushed back the expected closing dates for its purchases of T-Mobile USA and a block of Qualcomm spectrum by as much as three months as it battles regulatory scrutiny.

Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and six other state attorneys general join the Justice Department's antitrust suit, say the deal would result in less competition in the wireless market.

The Justice Department's move to block AT&T Inc. from buying
T-Mobile USA is motivated by the desire to keep a low-priced
competitor in the game. But that's a game T-Mobile is losing.

Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), is urging regulators to reject the pending AT&T’s merger, joining the Senate’s antitrust chair and other lawmakers in what may be a growing legislative backlash against the deal.

Opponents of AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile filed last-minute petitions to federal regulators Tuesday in hopes of blocking the $39 billion mega-deal. But they are going up against a deep-pocketed telecom giant that’s just getting started on its own campaign to influence the decision.

Looking at AT&T and its planned acquisition, it’s fair to suggest that it could not attract the financing necessary to complete the purchase if its plan was to raise prices. Not only would such a move be unrealistic given the existence of Verizon and other smaller competitors, it would also be self-defeating for high prices signaling to those outside the mobile-phone space a potentially profitable competitive opportunity.

AT&T announced on Sunday that it agreed to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom, in a $39 billion deal that will reshape the cellular telephone industry. The merger — one of the largest since the onset of the financial crisis — would combine the second and fourth largest cellular carriers in the nation, bringing together AT&T’s 95.5 million wireless subscribers with T-Mobile’s 33.7 million customers.

Networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to acquire Starent Networks, a maker of infrastructure equipment used by wireless carriers, for about $2.9 billion. The technology bellwether—which has been hurt by a pullback in customer ...