Less than a year after federal regulators blessed its $35 billion mega-merger, Sprint Nextel Corp. has filed opposition against AT&T Inc.'s $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth Corp.
A prime concern of Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) is that an AT&T-BellSouth would control 99 percent of the wireline access at Sprint Nextel's wireless towers in the AT&T and BellSouth service territories. Sprint Nextel must pay the wireline companies to access those high-capacity lines and route wireless calls.
In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, Sprint Nextel noted that AT&T and BellSouth also jointly own rival Cingular Wireless, "thereby increasing the merged company's incentive to use its special access pricing flexibility to benefit Cingular."
Sprint Nextel outlined a dozen conditions the FCC should place on the merger before approving it. Those conditions include prohibiting AT&T from increasing certain access rates for 30 months.
Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 wireless carrier nationally, did not disclose in the filing how much money it spends with AT&T and BellSouth on the access fees for wireless calls.
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