AT&T CEO: Divestitures Likely in Wake of T-Mobile Deal
Mar 30, 2011, 10:08 AM by Eric M. Zeman
Speaking at a recent conference, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson indicated that the company will likely have to drop some markets in order to garner approval of its proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. "We anticipate there will be some markets we will have to divest," he said, though he didn't name those markets. AT&T says that it needs to acquire T-Mobile in order to proceed with its 4G roll-out, and plans to use T-Mobile's 1700MHz spectrum (in addition to its own 700MHz holdings) for LTE. According to the Wall Street Journal, Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead has already indicated that his company would be interested in acquiring any divested markets/assets. AT&T's Stephenson also took the time to defend the acquisition. "This industry is anything but a duopoly," he said. "The industry is intensely competitive now, and will be intensely competitive after the deal." Sprint disagrees, and said it intends to fight the proposed acquisition. It has already asked the government to block it.
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Comments
If they divest markets.....
I'm all for at&t buying out t-mobile as long as someone other than Verizon gets the left overs.
If the deal goes through we're looking at 3 major national players using the traditional networking system. Verizon, At&t, and Sprint. I'm hopng lightsquared gets up and running, because as a wholeseller, this is create many more nationwide carriers.
It creates the nations ONLY GSM network through one carrier, meaning exclusive deals will ONLY be though said carrier. This will be beneficial ONLY to AT&T and OEM who will have an instant potential ...
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Here we go again...
Now some current AT&T customers will get sold in markets where the T-Mobile coverage is better (divest) and I can't help but wonder how many of them will be customers that have been passed around before, only to be reacquired and then perhaps passed off again.
I'm all for improvement and even mergers and acquisitions - but I've had enough of AT&T gobbling up and spitting out names and markets. I hope that the FTC doesn't forget how many times AT&T has changed its name in the process of growing and dumping customers only to grab others instead.
I love my iPhone, but I'm SICK of AT&T. I keep my reliable Sprint phone in my car and have to use it more than I should have to. I only hav...
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did you even tie your own shoes this morning?
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"Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead...
Not a snowball's chance in hell.
Item number one: Any divestitures cannot be to Verizon Wireless. These guys have been doing this *Bleep* with the last few deals they have completed. No wonder Verizon is all for this going through.
As far as I'm concerned, Verizon should get some spectrum
