WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Communication Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for an Oct. 12 vote on the proposed $67 billion merger of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp.—owners of No. 1 wireless carrier Cingular Wireless L.L.C.—and apparently has rejected urgings from the wireless industry and consumer advocates to impose conditions safeguarding special-access lines and wireless broadband spectrum, according to sources.
Sources said Martin began circulating an AT&T-BellSouth merger order late yesterday.
Both AT&T and BellSouth would like to close the transaction by the end of October, seeing that next month’s mid-term elections could enable Democrats to regain control of one or both houses of Congress and thereby complicate merger approval. As such, the FCC’s two Democrats—Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein—may well fight for merger conditions in a way that delays an FCC vote on the AT&T-BellSouth deal until after the Nov. 7 elections.
Another factor in the mix is the Justice Department. The agency’s antitrust lawyers have yet to rule on the AT&T and BellSouth tie-up, and are instead busy with a court-led re-examination of DoJ’s previous backing of the SBC Communications Inc.-AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc.-MCI Inc. deals.
Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. have warned about the potential harm of an AT&T-BellSouth tie-up, arguing that the deal would consolidate control of special-access lines—links for carrying traffic from a wireless base station to a mobile or landline switching center—in the hands of a single company.
Likewise, others have cautioned the FCC about the potentials danger of an AT&T-BellSouth combo, emphasizing the new entity would dominate the mobile phone, broadband, long-distance and Voice over Internet Protocol markets, and would control significant spectrum in the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands.
