Last week, AT&T seemed to voluntarily kill off its bid for a merger with T-Mobile, following the FCC’s decision to deny approval of the deal. Now that the FCC’s report has been made public, it appears AT&T’s hand was pretty much forced, and the deal looks to be completely dead in the water.
According to the FCC’s findings, a merger would be a greed-driven, monopolistic cash grab in every sense: not only would a substantial amount of jobs be lost, but competition from other carriers would be eliminated in 99 percent of major markets. Additionally, AT&T had argued that the deal would help expand its 4G LTE network, but in actuality, the wireless giant is entirely capable of doing so on its own.
The two parties still have a looming antitrust battle in court and a win could resurrect the merger. However, common sense dictates otherwise.
[via Gizmodo]
