US mobile giant Verizon Wireless – the market’s largest wireless operator in terms of subscribers – has broken its silence on the controversial USD39 billion would-be merger between AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA, declaring that it sees no problem with the tie-up, as long as it does not involve increased regulation for the market as a whole. Speaking to Total Telecom at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in Barcelona, Francis Shammo, chief financial officer for Verizon, commented: ‘We have been very silent on this one. The reason we’ve been silent: we said there needs to be consolidation and as long as there is consolidation without regulation we don’t have an objection to it’.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in late-August the US Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to prevent AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom. At the time deputy attorney general James M Cole commented: ‘The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services … This lawsuit seeks to ensure that everyone can continue to receive the benefits of that competition’. On 6 September Sprint brought its own antitrust lawsuit against AT&T, and Cellular South (now C Spire Wireless) followed suit on 19 September, claiming that the merger ‘threatens to substantially lessen competition’ and cause it significant losses and damages. Attorneys General representing seven US states – and Puerto Rico – have subsequently thrown their weight behind the DoJ’s case.
Meanwhile, commenting on Verizon’s long-term partnership with Vodafone – the US cellco is a joint venture between Verizon Communications (55%) and UK-based Vodafone Group (45%) – Shammo said the two companies are presently reviewing each other’s networks for potential synergies, with a view to aligning products to be more ‘in sync’ with each other. The two firms hope to make progress in the sphere of joint purchasing, and also conduct tests using one another’s emergent Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology.