AT&T and Verizon Double-Dare FCC To Stop Spectrum Consolidation

[Commentary] Rarely do you see companies double-dare the Federal Communications Commission to back up their brave talk about promoting competition. That is, however, what AT&T has just decided to do – with a little help from Verizon.

After gobbling a ton of spectrum last year in a series of small transactions, AT&T announced earlier this week it would buy up ATNI, which holds the last shreds of the old Alltel Spectrum. To top this off, Verizon just announced it has selected the purchaser for the 700 MHz spectrum it promised to sell off to get permission to buy the SpectrumCo spectrum. And guess what? The purchaser of the bulk of Verizon’s 700 MHz licenses, which Verizon promised to divest to promote competition – is AT&T! Mind you, this was exactly the anti-competitive scenario many of us predicted when Verizon made the offer to sell off its 700 MHz licenses in order to bulk up on its AWS footprint. Nevertheless, the FCC refused to impose a condition prohibiting the sale of the licenses to AT&T on the grounds that it could wait to see who purchased the licenses before acting. Well, now we know, and the FCC has the “hypothetical” transaction it did not want to consider last summer squarely before it today.