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Although I wrote "The T-Mobile bid is on the brink of failure," emotionally I still expected Cicconi to win and assumed I was tilting at windmills. Under Genachowski, AT&T has won something like 28 out of 30 major decisions, with the two losses (LightSquared spectrum, compulsory roaming) only partial. A few days ago, one of the best journalists covering the FCC wrote " I feel like I am talking in a vacuum. Sigh."

     Ultimately, the merger failed because everyone realized eliminating a major competitor would hurt consumers. Here's some steps along the way you may have missed.

AT&T inadvertently pressured Obama's people to kill the deal now rather than going through the expected year of reviews. There was an implied threat that if Obama blocked the deal he would be denounced as "anti-business." This was powerful incentive to take care of business this year, well before the 2012 election.

Obama needed to stop the merger, soon, because it would have devastating results on next year's spectrum auctions. T-Mobile and AT&T likely will now be aggressive bidders. Without them, the auction proceeds would probably have been $billions less and hurt the budget. AT&T made a very bad mistake in a filing when they said the deal would give them the spectrum they needed. That implied that if the deal went through, they wouldn't need to buy at the auction.

False claims lost AT&T's credibility. Nobody who knows the industry believed that T would stop their LTE deployment at 80% and give Verizon a massive advantage. Nor was it credible that T couldn't afford to do 95% or so without this deal because Verizon was already committed to 98%. Yet Randall twice before Congress and AT&T literally hundreds of times said they would stop at 80%. AT&T also claimed they needed T-Mobile towers because otherwise they couldn't expand their network rapidly. But there was no reason AT&T couldn't have just rented space on most of the same towers and been live in less than the year the deal would take. 

Greg Rosston of Stanford, a good economist, was brought in to lead the FCC review. FCC Chief Economist Marius Schwartz had taken so much money from AT&T in the past he thought it wasn't right to take part. Rosston's an establishment type with many corporate financial ties, but he's demonstrated he can put the public interest first. I reported that in an academic paper he had established the U.S. wireless industry is "highly concentrated." AT&T, of course, brought i nthe usual "distinguished economists" who for $500-$1,000/hour will "prove" anything the company desires. Greg has the skill to make mincemeat out of them and did.

Gene Kimmelman was a crucial part of the Justice Department team. Gene for decades has been among the most articulate consumer advocates in D.C. and specialized in telecom. Very few know the issues as well as he does or make arguments as passionately. When I saw his name on the court papers, I knew none of the usual falsifications would get by. 

Laury Bobbish at DOJ emphasized in a 2008 presentation "Access to credible information is critical." AT&T fought bitterly with the FCC about releasing key information. What were they hiding?

    The team at DOJ has decades of experience with telecom mergers and related battles including the Microsoft antitrust case. They will be very hard to beat.