www.freepress.net<\/a> for more information. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What would have become one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies will no longer be, now that AT&T has dropped its $39 billion bid to merge with T-Mobile. The desire to merge was announced earlier in the year but was immediately denounced by media reform activists, saying that an AT&T merger with T-Mobile would lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"\/home\/graphics\/ATT_Tmobile.jpg\")
What would have become one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies will no longer be, now that AT&T has dropped its $39 billion bid to merge with T-Mobile. The desire to merge was announced earlier in the year but was immediately denounced by media reform activists, saying that an AT&T merger with T-Mobile would lead to less competition and worse service for mobile users. AT&T has spent many millions of dollars lobbying in favor of the deal. But ultimately, the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, both of which challenged the merger, prevailed. However, even before the legal battles launched in Washington against the deal had a chance to conclude, AT&T, seeing the writing on the wall, voluntarily announced it would back out of the deal this past Monday. The contractual cost of backing out is a $4 billion fee to T-Mobile. The current corporate landscape in telecommunications, which is already dominated by four very large companies, will remain static for now, with Verizon remaining the biggest firm, AT&T, coming in second, Sprint third, and T-Mobile, fourth. Media reports of the failed merger are lauding it as a victory for consumers and for the Obama administration. Politico described the turn of events as “a counter point to critics, who claim that Big Business always gets its way in Washington.” <\/p>\n