AT&T to buy T-Mobile USA

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Motel75

I certainly hope this fails. And once again, where was Vodafone in all this?

Remember that Vodafone owns 40% of Verizon. When LTE rolls out, former CDMA and former GSM networks will talk to each other perfectly, (e.g. they won't need TMobile). I would have loved to see Wind (which is in Canada) come to the US as well. The Russian money in Wind could make Homeland Security nervous.

[Motel75]

Originally Posted by Stu

Remember that Vodafone owns 40% of Verizon.

Sure, but the head of DT once said that Voda had made it clear that if he ever felt like selling, he'd have a buyer. (Of course, they'd have to untange the messy arrangement with Verizon, but this wouldn't stop it.) Apart from Sprint and AT&T, there was an anonymous "third bidder" - this could have been Vodafone, but it could also have been Carlos Slim, or Telefonica, or something entirely different.

Having said that, one scenario I could imagine is having Vodafone convert its 44 percent ownership of Verizon Wireless to a somewhat smaller percentage of Verizon itself (and swapping out Verizon's remaining 22 percent ownership of Vodafone Italia while they do this). This would make it easier for Vodafone to increase control over VZ, which is why something like this probably hasn't happened, but it would also make it easier for Vf to exit Verizon if it wanted to.

Originally Posted by Stu

I would have loved to see Wind (which is in Canada) come to the US as well. The Russian money in Wind could make Homeland Security nervous.

I'm sure. (The Egyptian money by itself would be problematic!) But now the biggest single shareholder in AT&T is going to be Deutsche Telekom, which is quite interesting, as the two firms really won't be competing head-to-head anywhere if the merger clears.