The senior Democrat at the FCC has serious questions about AT&T’s attempt to acquire T-Mobile
(Kim Hart of Politico) What do you see as the biggest impediment to that happening and how long do you see the process taking?
( Michael Copps, FCC) I really don’t know how long the process will take. There’s some speculation it could be the better part of a year. I don’t know that it should take that long, but we’ll just have to wait and see what the expectations at the commission are. This is a huge transaction. It’s a paradigm-altering transaction, as far as the world of wireless goes.
You will remember in the Comcast merger, I said at the outset it would have been a very steep climb for me. I ended up voting against it. This is maybe an even steeper climb from the standpoint of a lot of power and a lot of influence given to one company in a world where two companies are going to control, like, 80 percent of the spectrum. I would hope that my colleagues, in looking at this transaction in the months ahead, will be asking themselves some pretty serious questions about what residue of competition will be left if this merger is approved.