AT&T|T-Mobile USA

Ding dong, sing the naysayers, AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile is almost dead. Meanwhile, Verizon is stealthily hunting down spectrum via a lower profile strategy that could generate far less public grief. Consider its recent moves.

The hottest tech policy issue to start the year will continue to be online piracy legislation, which has touched off a fierce debate between supporters of the content industries and the Internet community, which is skeptical of the bill's attempts to enforce copyright laws online by demanding search engines and other Web firms delete links to foreign infringing websites.

Citing uncertainty about the fate of AT&T's $39-billion deal to take over T-Mobile, a California administrative law judge has indefinitely postponed proceedings in a 6-month-old state investigation of the deal.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski defended the FCC staff report that concluded AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile was not in the public interest.

AT&T and T-Mobile asked District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle to postpone an antitrust lawsuit as the companies were assessing “whether and how” to proceed with their $39 billion mega-merger.

On November 29, 2011, AT&T and T-Mobile withdrew their applications for that deal, so the FCC has restarted the AT&T-Qualcomm clock as of Nov 29.

The Justice Department said it wants to withdraw or postpone its antitrust case against AT&T’s proposed acquisition of smaller rival T-Mobile USA now that the two companies no longer have a valid application to approve the deal.

If you find yourself negotiating a merger with a multibillion-dollar penalty for failure, remember this: Breaking up could be tax-deductible.

AT&T's decision to withdraw its application to obtain T-Mobile USA's mobile spectrum license at the Federal Communications Commission raises a question about whether the company's proposed acquisition is still active, the Department of Justice has said.

House Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission regarding its decision to revise the spectrum screen after reviewing the AT&T / T-Mobile deal.

AT&T and Qualcomm are urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to quickly give final approval to AT&T's purchase of $1.9 billion of wireless licenses from Qualcomm, despite calls for the agency to delay a decision.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission flexed the same muscle it once used to quash market forces in the phone industry to quash market forces in the wireless industry.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.

AT&T hasn’t yet formally surrendered in its campaign to pay $39 billion for T-Mobile, and may not for a while. Its top officials are still making provocative, pugnacious pronouncements, whinging about its unfair treatment at the hands of regulators, while repeating arguments that have all but been discredited and dispensing other irrelevancies. It’s obvious to most observers that AT&T’s attempt to take over T-Mobile is all but dead. The post-mortems are starting and the question being asked is: what went wrong for AT&T? There is a two-part answer: 1. nothing 2. everything.