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Reports today indicate that AT&T may be cooling even more on its bid to merge with T-Mobile—a concept that Consumers Union (the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports) has not applauded.
Chris Morran of our sister blog, The Consumerist, writes:
According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T had been in talks with Leap, Dish and MetroPCS about selling off post-merger assets to these smaller companies in order to make the deal more palatable to regulators. The asset sales to Leap alone would have represented at least 30% of the merger's value, reports the Journal.But those discussion have come to a halt over concerns that even these divestitures would not be enough to win over the DOJ.
Given that AT&T would owe upward of $4 billion in cash and spectrum to T-Mobile's parent company Deutsche Telekom if this deal falls through, the Journal's sources point out that there are other options being considered, like AT&T buying a stake in T-Mobile (but not the whole deal) or some sort of joint tech-sharing venture.
In August, the DOJ sought to block the merger. And last month, AT&T successfully pulled its FCC application for the T-Mobile merger.
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