U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said today she is considering a request by the DOJ to dismiss or postpone the antitrust case involving AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA.
“We don’t have any confidence that we are spending all this time and effort and the taxpayers money and that we’re not being spun,” Huvelle said, according to a report by Bloomberg. “The landscape has changed.”
Huvelle wondered whether it was still possible for AT&T to complete the deal before a September 12th merger deadline.
ZDNet calls the request by the DOJ a “game of cat-and-mouse and one-upmanship.”
A 157-page report from the Federal Communications Commission released last week indicated that AT&T’s proposed buyout of T-Mobile would drastically reduce competition in the wireless market and have a negative impact on jobs. DOJ attorneys asked the judge to delay the case because of AT&T’s decision last to withdraw its application with the FCC.
The U.S. Justice Department in August sued to block the deal, saying that “AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.”
