The FCC has restarted the shot clock on its 180-day review of AT&T's (NYSE:T) proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. The commission halted the review July 20 after AT&T said it would submit new economic models on which it was basing its case for the deal. The regulatory agency said it has received the information it required from AT&T and will relaunch its examination of the deal today, which is day 83 of the review.
In response to the FCC's decision to restart the clock, AT&T Senior Vice President of Federal Regulatory Bob Quinn said that "the engineering and economic models we have provided the commission confirm the extensive capacity gains and corresponding consumer benefits that the combination of AT&T's and T-Mobile's complementary assets will produce."
A decision on final regulatory approval of the deal is not expected until March 2012.
This news comes just a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the FCC is asking AT&T to provide more details on why it wants to acquire T-Mobile USA. The request occurred after an unredacted copy of a document was accidentally uploaded to the FCC website with information that indicated that AT&T had considered and rejected a plan to on its own expand its network to cover 97 percent of the U.S. market for a cost of $3.8 billion.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
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