AT & T disclaims buy T-Mobile

The U.S. telecom operator AT & T, announced Monday, December 19, he abandoned his proposed acquisition of T-Mobile to Deutsche Telekom. The giant merger nearly $ 40 billion (31 billion) was particularly opposed by the competition authorities. “After having carefully considered its options, AT & T agreed with Deutsche Telekom AG to end his bid for T-Mobile, launched in March ” , says in a statement.

The Department of Justice announced Aug. 31 that he would challenge in court the proposed acquisition on the grounds it would hurt competition. The operation has also been opposed by some members of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, saying it would be detrimental to employment and investment in the sector. Tuesday, Rene Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom criticized the veto authority. “It is incomprehensible to block a transaction that would have helped the U.S. to meet their goals ” for the development of mobile Internet, he said at a news conference.

AT & T currently controls 27% of mobile phone subscriptions in the United States, behind Verizon Wireless (31%) but well ahead of Sprint Nextel (14%) and T-Mobile (9%). AT & T and Deutsche Telekom had reported in November that they were preparing for a possible failure of the sale: AT & T had planned to take a pretax charge of $ 4 billion (3 billion euros) to take account of the severance pay of contract that would pay to Deutsche Telekom as appropriate.

WAR OF FREQUENCIES

AT & T, who sees and s’ fly the opportunity to become the first mobile operator in the United States, however, said in a statement that he would conclude a roaming agreement with the owner of T-Mobile.

With its proposed acquisition, AT & T wanted urgently for German assets, he said, overcome a shortage of frequencies. Deutsche Telekom would, in turn, take this opportunity to refocus on Europe as T-Mobile loses subscribers. AT & T will seek other frequencies it deems necessary to compete with Verizon Wireless, which has agreed to buy frequencies to cable operators. Deutsche Telekom said for his part to reinstate T-Mobile in its continuing operations.

The action AT & T lost 0.8% after the close of Wall Street . That of its competitor Sprint Nextel surged 7.9%.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2011 at 10:54 am and is filed under Technology. Tags: AT&T You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.