There is clearly a lot of positioning going on by AT&T to convince the public and U.S. regulators that its proposed acquisition of rival T Mobile from Deutsche Telecom shouldn’t be viewed as anti-competitive. One certainly might think that when two of the top leaders in any industry join forces.
If you check out the AT&T website, already there is a video of CEO Randall Stephensen discussing, among other things, his respect for regulators. There is a brief presentation of the deal that shows how consolidation has not hurt pricing. to the contrary, prices have come down since consolidation has been underway.
AT&T argues that it needs a deal like this to expand capacity. and that may be the argument that wins the day. As more and more Americans move toward mobile computing, especially with the introduction of tablet computing devices, there will be a bigger strain on the mobile networks. You can’t retard the growth of one segment (tablets) because of problems in another (poor performance on wireless networks).
If AT&T can convince regulators that such a merger will increase capacity, then that’s the argument that wins the day.
