As expected AT&T has officially responded to the Justice Department’s lawsuit attempting to block AT&T’s 39 Billion dollar purchase of T-Mobile. AT&T wasn’t just twiddling its thumbs for the past few days since the DoJ filed the lawsuit, AT&T was busy writing a 27 page response. Luckily for you we won’t bore you with all 27 pages of juicy drama, but please feel free to enjoy it on your own. In summary AT&T disagrees with the DoJ, and would really like the purchase to go through.
The main point of contention raised by the DoJ is that the purchase will reduce the number of choices consumers have when purchasing cell phone service. T-Mobile is currently the fourth largest nationwide provider, and if the deal goes through AT&T will become the largest provider in the country. One of the more interesting arguments made by AT&T is the fact that T-Mobile is losing customers, and thus is a fading competitor, and ultimately wouldn’t be around long anyways so why not let the purchase go through?
Another point made by AT&T is that the DoJ forgot to factor in other smaller cell phone companies like Metro PCS, and regional providers like US Cellular. With these smaller companies AT&T contends that consumers will still have a choice when shopping for a phone. While it may be true that there will still be some choice, there won’t be much choice.
AT&T also says that it needs to buy T-Mobile to use its spectrum to expand its own network for next-generation wireless technology. AT&T will be able to build out its LTE network more effectively, and thus it will benefit customers more to allow the purchase to go through. You can read our take on who actually wins or loses if the purchase goes through here.
With the DoJ’s lawsuit, and Sprint’s lawsuit we are expecting to see AT&T defending itself more and more as time goes on. AT&T is meeting with the judge overseeing the case on September 21, at which time we are sure more information will come out.
