Cowboys’ mobile telephone service out on the ranches would improve if AT&T buys T-Mobile USA Inc, according to the United States Cattlemen’s Association.
“It’s always been a joke to us: More bars in more places. Yeah, but those bars ain’t in these places,” said Jess Peterson, the trade group’s executive vice president, referring in an interview to an old AT&T ad campaign.
With a filing at the Federal Communications Commission, the cattlemen joined songwriters, balloonists, governors, labor unions, technology companies and groups representing Hispanics and blacks to support AT&T’s $39-billion bid, according to a Bloomberg Government review of comments submitted to the agency.
On the other side, urging the FCC to block the deal, are other technology companies, public-interest groups and tens of thousands of people who are “very, very skeptical of this merger,” according to Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, a Washington-based policy group.
Through yesterday, the FCC had received more than 39,000 comments on the deal announced March 20, about 5,000 more than it fielded over 10 months on Comcast Corp.(CMCSA)’s purchase of General Electric Co’s NBC Universal unit completed in January.
“Because this deal is so big and the stakes are so high, I think you’ll find major stakeholders reaching out as far as the eye can see to round up support for their positions,” Jeffrey Silva, a Washington-based analyst for Medley Global Advisors LLC, said in an interview. “And what you’re seeing is a reflection of that.”
AT&T, the second-largest US wireless company, wants to buy Bellevue, Washington-based T-Mobile, a Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) unit that is the fourth-largest, to form a new market leader ahead of Verizon Wireless. It needs approval from the FCC and Justice Department, which are conducting a review that AT&T executives have said may last until March 2012.
Public comments carry “some weight” as the FCC completes a review that considers statements from rival companies, pleas by the merging entities, letters from lawmakers, views of antitrust officials at the Justice Department and economic analyses of the merger’s effect on competition, Silva said.
FCC spokesman Neil Grace declined to comment.
The FCC’s website doesn’t list deal proponents and opponents separately. Aaron, whose group says the transaction would erode competition and kill jobs, said comments are “running something like 10-to-1 against the merger,” including 30,000 comments from Free Press members that weren’t all sent as separate entries at the FCC.
SPRINT OPPOSITION
Those seeking to block the deal, saying it would lessen competition, include Sprint Nextel Corp, the nation’s third- largest wireless carrier; satellite provider Dish Network Corp; and the Washington-based Computer & Communications Industry Association, which lists members including Google Inc and EBay Inc Yahoo! Inc, another CCIA member, urged regulators in a June 6 filing to approve the transaction.
“It’s clear that tens of thousands of individual consumers and organisations across the country agree with Sprint that AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile should be stopped,” John Taylor, a spokesman for the Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint, said in an interview.
The CCIA told the FCC in a May 31 filing that the deal would wreak “competitive damage” and create “a dominant, vertically integrated Ma Bell with a degree of network control unprecedented in this country for 40 years.”
CATTLE PRODUCERS
Most comments to the FCC that consist of more than a cursory e-mail support AT&T, Michael Balmoris, a Washington- based spokesman for AT&T, said in an interview.
“It is entirely natural that we would seek support for our merger, just as our opponents have sought support for their position,” Balmoris said in an e-mail. “The difference is that we seem to be having success and they are not.”
In filings, rural groups including the cattlemen’s association, which represents cattle producers, focused on AT&T’s pledge to extend wireless high-speed Internet to 97 percent of Americans.
