A collection of public interest groups, and a separate filing by companies, including Sprint, rural cellular carriers, Cincinnati Bell and others, asked the FCC to combine their analysis of the two big AT&T deals currently under review: the USD 39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA, and AT&T's USD 1.9 billion purchase of spectrum from Qualcomm. The public interest groups include Free Press, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge, Consumers Union and the Open Technology Initiative of the New America Foundation. "Both the T-Mobile merger and the Qualcomm license transfer, if approved, would further empower an already dominant wireless carrier to leverage its control over devices, backhaul, and consumers in ways that stifle competition. As with other mergers, the competitive impact of the two transactions in combination may be even greater than the impact of each separately," the letter said. The public interest groups are against the proposed transfer of Qualcomm's 700 MHz license to AT&T as this would only further the competitive disparity between AT&T and Verizon. The groups noted that neither AT&T nor Qualcomm included the proposes merger of AT&T with T-Mobile USA in their filings. The groups said that the deal with T-Mobile USA would reshape the entire American wireless industry in one stroke, and could greatly affect competition, especially including the Qualcomm spectrum buy. " (The) approval of these transactions would further enable AT&T to suppress competition, stifle innovation and harm consumers. At a minimum, the FCC should combine its review of both the merger and license transfer in order to properly assess the joint impact of both transactions on the wireless market," the groups said.
