AT&T: Not budging on mergers

Over the weekend, an ever-patient and optimistic AT&T commented on the FCC's delayed merger vote: "We've struck the deal about a year ago. We said it will be closed in this calendar year. It proceeds very well on the calendar. We have great optimism in what we are doing with the FCC," said Chris Rooney, AT&T senior vice president. "Right now we are still very optimistic to have it finalized in the fourth quarter." According to the report, negotiations between the two Democrat FCC commissioners and AT&T could become ever tenuous, since AT&T publicly stated it would not make further concessions to help the deal go through.

For more on the AT&T-BellSouth merger:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)