In this, the penultimate week of 2011, AT&T
Adding injury to insult, the merger's failure penalty requires AT&T to give T-Mobile $3 billion in cash and several billion dollars worth of spectrum. The company has already given notice that it will take a $4 billion (pre-tax) fourth-quarter charge toward those losses.
AT&T's expressed rationale for trying to make that deal was to give it more wireless spectrum. So having to give up that invaluable resource instead is a bitter disappointment, one exacerbated by the recent spectrum score made by archrival Verizon
Consolation prize
Perhaps the FCC felt a little remorse for the complete trashing it gave AT&T's merger application last month, because this week it approved the company's $1.9 billion spectrum purchase from Qualcom. It's a relatively small gain compared to the potential spectrum increase it would have gained from the T-Mobile deal, but every little bit will help in playing catch-up to Verizon.
What's good for the goose...
The curtain may have dropped on AT&T's regulatory soap opera, but it could just be lifting on a new episode starring Verizon and its newest best-friends-forever -- and I do mean forever. The wireless carrier's latest cronies are cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks.
Verizon bought $3.6 billion worth of unused spectrum from those companies, giving it a large coverage advantage over AT&T in the largest markets. But what may interfere with Verizon's plans are the reselling provisions in the agreement. The cable companies will have the right to resell Verizon's wireless services, and Verizon will have the same rights in regard to the cable companies' voice and broadband services. This has given rise to a DOJ investigation of the proposal.
DISH may have something on its plate it doesn't want to swallow
Wednesday saw DISH Network's shares jump 9%. Why? Because of speculation that with AT&T's plans thwarted, it may come after DISH and its cache of spectrum. The T-Mobile deal had a $39 billion price tag. DISH's market cap is almost $13 billion. The math may work out, especially since DISH has not yet put together a wireless network. That may diminish any anticompetitive aspects of such a deal in the FCC's and DOJ's eyes.
And now there are four
Leap Wireless
Big fish eats small fish
Akamai
Put on a smiley face
The last suck on the straw of this week's telecom news milkshake is the story of Samsung suing Apple
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