Deutsche Telekom, parent company of T-Mobile USA (T-Mobile) and AT&T have filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a joint opposition to petitions to deny their application seeking approval of AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. The filing is supported by economic and technical declarations, which highlight the numerous consumer and public interest that will be gained through combining the two companies and it refutes the arguments set forth by parties opposed to the transaction. With the scale, spectrum and other resources generated by this transaction, the combined company will deploy LTE to more than 97 percent of the US population, AT&T said. The capacity created will provide a platform for enhanced bandwidth-intensive mobile applications while improving consumers' overall service quality through fast data speeds and few dropped and blocked calls. In the process it will create jobs and investment, bridge the digital divide, and achieve the government's rural broadband objectives, all without the expenditure of government funds. The transaction has support from governors of seventeen states, labour unions representing 20 million workers, minority and disability rights advocates, rural and environmental groups, venture capitalists, and a swath of the high-tech community's applications developers, device manufacturers and equipment vendors. Companies such as Avaya, Brocade, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, RIM and Yahoo! support this merger.
