Here’s what appears to be another nail in the coffin for AT&T’s bid for T-Mobile. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T’s attempts to sell assets to other carriers — a divestiture designed to make the merger more palatable to regulators — have gone “cold.”

The Journal notes:

“While AT&T could still try to fight the Justice Department in court, alternatives to a full-blown merger are looking more likely, the people said. Those options include AT&T’s taking a stake in the smaller carrier or doing a joint venture to share network technology, they said.”

The pending $39 billion merger has been plagued by government intervention and lawsuits, and late last month AT&T decided to pull its application from 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.”

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