Ding! Dong! The Deal is Dead!

(click headline for the full story)  So the "bad guys" lost a big one today by announcing that the merger is dead.  Unfortunately, it likely does not change much for the cell tower schools in DeKalb County as there is still a chance AT&T will want to buy up T-mobile's infrastructure, which means the towers are still a hot commodity in the money game being placed by the telcomm industry right now.  But, it's still good news to hear that a total monopoly of sorts has been stopped, or at least slowed down for now.  In the case of cell towers, however, competition may not be such a good thing as each company in the US continues to push for more and more towers to "one up" each other and the ones paying the price - the consumer. 

Ma Bell will not be ringing in the new year in a very happy way this year....

AT&T (NYSE: T) has decided not to challenge the Federal Communication Commission's objections to its proposed US$39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. Given the energy, time and resources it clearly put into the effort, the company is likely still licking its wounds, but it will soon have to address the question of what to do next -- as will T-Mobile and its parent company Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT).

The proposed deal was seen as the solution to several problems: how AT&T could extend services throughout the U.S., despite its constrained bandwidth; how T-Mobile could survive in a market where it's a distant No. 4; and how Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent, could finally exit the U.S.

New Questions Pending

The deal may be dead, but the problems it was meant to solve are very much alive.
In certain respects, the companies' positions have worsened. Deutsche Telekom wasted several months as it waited to see how the proposal would play out. Ditto for AT&T, which could have been exploring other alternatives. Instead, it must now pay DT about $4 billion in a breakup fee.
T-Mobile, for its part, is still grappling with the issue of how to compete from its low perch in the market -- backed by a reluctant parent to boot.

Read More:  http://www.technewsworld.com/story/deals/74022.html