AT&T argued that the merger — the largest worldwide in two years — would increase its coverage to 95 percent of the U.S. population, especially into rural areas, satisfying a key technology goal of the Obama administration.
Anticipating regulators’ concerns, AT&T also maintained that the U.S. wireless industry remains “fiercely competitive,” especially in local markets where low-cost regional carriers are becoming popular.
AT&T needs the approval of the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission to buy T-Mobile, which is the smallest of the major cellular companies and has carved out a niche by offering cheaper plans.
Whether or not regulators approve the merger, Wall Street took the news as a sign of the economy’s strength. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.5 percent.
But public interest organizations expressed alarm yesterday about the transaction. Many argued that the deal will effectively render Verizon and AT&T — which control about 60 percent of the wireless market with about 200 million subscribers — a duopoly.
“You’re having the second- and fourth-biggest companies come together so they can totally cream the other guys, and when it comes down to it, what we’re talking about for consumers is prices. They will go up,” said Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, a digital rights nonprofit. “And it’s not as if anybody else can suddenly come into the market and challenge these guys.”
Many critics contend that the smaller carriers are hobbled because AT&T and Verizon are not required by law to give subscribers of smaller carriers data-roaming plans that enable Internet access.
“Competitors are going to say, ‘We can’t compete and they’ll want to get bought up by competitors,’ ” said Parul Desai, the policy counsel at Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of the Consumer Reports. “That leaves consumers with less choice and bad prices, and bad consumer prices affect innovation, especially when you have two or three carriers dominating the market.”
AT&T has a long history with antitrust regulators, who sought to end the company’s dominance in the 1980s by splitting it into the eight so-called Baby Bells after a landmark antitrust suit. In 2005, one of those firms, SBC, bought its former parent.
Nearly three decades after trying to bust up AT&T, regulators are again scrutinizing the company’s power. The FCC and the Justice Department have expressed some concerns that consumers do not have enough choice among wireless carriers.
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