The DOJ promised to protect consumers from the anticompetitive behavior that could result from a transaction of this kind.

AT&T, like in every occasion it has faced opposition to the lawsuit, downplayed the importance of the deal. As the carrier said, such involvement was not uncommon for states, no matter what the deal was. AT&T even went further by trying to demonstrate its numeric advantage given to it by eleven state attorneys general as well as many officials belonging to the federal or local level who were backing the deal.

Even the Democrats, through the voice of fifteen Congress members, supported the company.

Of course there are lawsuits that oppose mergers in the United States, but they occur for a quite small minority of proposed mergers and usually mean there is a possibility for the merger to be denied outright. According to AT&T, the company would negotiate a settlement, but the existence of the lawsuit signifies the Department of Justice does not believe that an amount of divested network areas or some price guarantees could resolve the problem.

Much of the recent action appeared a short time after AT&T posted a version of a filing saying that it needed only $3.8 billion to attain the 95 to 97 percent of LTE coverage the company had promised with the merger. The carrier has officially declared that it still needed to spend about ten times more in order to eliminate one of its major competitors that had the same goal. However, it has never mentioned the direct implications of either having made false statements about its initial needs for LTE or of the necessity of the merger.

AT&T and T-Mobile were also sued by Sprint because it would have to struggle against a rival having majority market share and significantly more control over elements like prices, device choice or network rates.

Other deals like the merger of Verizon and Alltel have forced the acquiring carrier to divest some cellular licenses at least, in order to allow a smaller carrier to buy them and this way improve its network. Mandating price limits or roaming agreements, or even net neutrality terms would be other options the FCC could adopt. This kind of terms can be limited to a number of years, assuming that they would not be necessary later.

Considering the AT&T-T-Mobile deal, the former mentioned that it was confident the takeover estimated at $39 billion would be approved and used a patriotic approach to impress the FCC. Some of its promises have been to spread LTE to 95 percent of the population, to create new jobs and to improve the use of wireless spectrum for future broadband. Some critics have said that LTE could get additional coverage regardless that the merger would consolidate spectrum, and also that claims related to strong competition were false, as Sprint, US Cellular or other competitors had much smaller sizes.

Attempts of pushing the deal through would spur on FCC regulation in its process of reaching a final decision. At the CTIA opening keynote, Genachowski said that a vote on data roaming was expected at the commission’s meeting on April 7 and that he would insist for lower rates of roaming and required roaming agreements. Advocates of this idea have argued that the current situation would let companies like Verizon and AT&T shut out their rivals by either negotiating unfair roaming rates or simply refusing a roaming deal.

Many critics have believed that Verizon would buy Sprint to overcome the deficit of about thirty million subscribers. Sprint has already generated concerns that bringing eighty percent of phone subscribers in the United States on a single network would be anti-competitive. A deal of Sprint and Verizon would lead to a more established duopoly and would make life difficult for US Cellular, or Cricket, or any small carrier.

AT&T has argued that its buyout of T-Mobile would conform to national goals as eighteen of the largest twenty urban areas had at least four carriers, but many of them were hamstrung by either device selection or lack of wireless spectrum which they could use. Either aspect would be exacerbated if the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile finishes within a year.

The lack of a merger with Verizon could be even more damaging for Sprint. The carrier may have the chance to still remain independent, but has only just started to add regular subscription customers, while it is continuing to loose hundreds of millions of dollars quarter after quarter. The announced T-Mobile deal associated with the lack of a Verizon deal for itself would mean cutting off a major source of funding.

The company said that T-Mobile USA would remain an independent entity and that the acquisition would be finished in about twelve months. The iPhone would not be offered in the near future, but cutting edge phones like the Galaxy S 4G of Samsung and the new Sidekick 4G represent a good choice.

An immediate plan was not expected due to the nature of the current GSM iPhone. The iPhone 4 has no 1,700MHz 3G support and therefore is limited to 2G (EDGE) for data, which represents a disadvantage compared to the AT&T device. There were rumors of the iPhone 5 on T-Mobile, but if they are true the carrier would receive a one-off device which would be unnecessary after the merge.

The company has lately become elusive on this topic and refused to either deny or confirm its intentions related to the iPhone. However, it has made use of the same language Verizon used when a deal was imminent and it did not want to make public its plans and risk seeing its Android sales decrease.

On the other hand, AT&T said that its announced buyout of T-Mobile would be beneficial to customers belonging to both networks, as it would include an improved coverage and would allow T-Mobile users to access LTE-based 4G.

Both companies claimed that carrier competition would still stay in the United States, since five or even more carriers were present in eighteen of the top twenty cities. As the companies said, there is an escalation of battles between large and small carriers and it would be even more acerb as 4G creates a more common battleground. Concluding this deal is still dependent on regulatory approval, while a breakup fee is also possible. Both companies hoped to complete the deal within a year.

This takeover comes in spite of repeated and strong rumors related to a Sprint/T-Mobile deal and is supposed to cause a major problem in smartphone market share. Since T-Mobile cell sites will start using AT&T’s frequencies, T-Mobile users will be able to get the iPhone without forcing Apple to make a separate model. As T-Mobile was using a rare 1,700MHz band, it needed special-run models of a phone or was entirely locked out.

However, Android could be the one to face the greatest damage following this deal. Being the original carrier of Android, T-Mobile has always been the preferred carrier to get “halo” phones from Google, such as the myTouch 3G, G1, Nexus One or nexus S. nevertheless, it lost this position quickly enough, after the launch of the Motorola Droid on Verizon, but permanently contributed significant share. The iPhone always dominated AT&T and this position was not menaced even after the launch of some flagship phones like the Atrix of Motorola or the Captivate of Samsung. Therefore, some T-Mobile users could trade in Android or could get the iPhone as the first smartphone they would buy.

E-readers have rarely been present at carriers. The deal with AT&T gives Amazon an important boost in retail and also marks the premiere of the Kindle and iPad being simultaneously available through the same store and outside of general electronics shops like Best Buy. Although both devices have been widely distributed in retail, they have usually been separate.

Amazon has stressed that it is concentrated on reading rather than being in competition with Apple. However, the company has permanently increased its attempts to strengthen the e-reader market and has directed both its retail and marketing towards Apple’s iPad. The latest TV ad of Amazon refers to the iPad’s visibility and mentions the inherent problems a glossy LCD would have for reading.

Both retailers are expected to expose specific reasons in case of dropping AT&T. it is true that LetsTalk had notified its users with a message it had posted on Boy Genius Report, in which it accuses AT&T of changing the business strategy in order to obtain “cost savings and retrenchment”.

It is not clear so far if AT&T’s new strategy will lead to the loss of larger retailers that are currently offering its lineup of mobile devices.

The benchmarks do not include those instances in which tests failed or did not complete properly. For example, AT&T iPhone users have frequently had problems with slow or even inexistent 3G data in some cities, especially those situated in the San Francisco Bay Area. Coverage areas were not addressed too, Verizon having a larger overall coverage map, but occasionally having no coverage at all or a reduced one versus AT&T.

However, both providers were ranked well behind some international providers when performing additional tests. For instance, Israel’s Pelephone was about twice as fast, with 3.3Mbps downstream and 1.3Mbps upstream. Another carrier, the A1 from Austria, was situated just behind, with 3.1Mbps downstream but as fast upstream as Pelephone.

Both Bell and Telus Canadian carriers were also very close, being fastest in downloads and uploads respectively. Bell attained 2.9Mbps in downloads versus 1.3Mbps in uploads. Telus was a bit lower in downloads, at 2.8Mbps, but succeeded to hit 1.5Mbps in uploads.

Of course, there are factors that can influence download speeds and which are not necessarily controllable by the carrier, like the density of the population or even the preference for a particular handset. Many of the carriers, however, have had plenty of time to prepare for or find ways to compensate the data-heavy devices of Apple on their networks.

This bonus is one of multiple tactics the carrier is using to discourage people who were intending to switch to the Verizon iPhone, officially launched a few days ago. AT&T has also introduced unlimited calls from mobile to mobile, phone trade-ins as well as free MicroCell handouts. Recently, it issued coupons for accessories with 20 percent discount.

According to the company spokesman, the texts referring to the 1,000-minute bonuses are legitimate.

The normal price of the iPhone 3GS is $99, which is already $100 lower than the iPhone 4 base model. The reason of this drop of price is not very clear yet. It is possible that both Apple and AT&T are committed to clear the stock out as much as possible, for the simple reason that the iPhone 3GS is already over a year old and an iPhone of the fifth generation is supposed to ship this summer, after the launch of a Verizon model. Another constraint is generated by cheap Windows Phone 7- and Android-based smartphones which match or even surpass the iPhone 3GS’ features.