Unredacted AT&T Filing Shows $3.8B Price Tag

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AT&T’s pledge to expand its LTE network to an additional 55 million Americans if the T-Mobile USA mega-merger goes through carries a $3.8 billion price tag, according to data accidentally leaked by the company.

The operator’s promise to expand its LTE network to rural areas of the country has served as the proverbial carrot on a stick in its efforts to build support for the controversial acquisition. Politicians, consumer groups and top corporations in the tech industry who support the deal have all cited the company’s plan for extra LTE coverage as one of the main reasons the Federal regulators should allow the massive merger to go through. AT&T’s first LTE plan covered just 80 percent of the U.S. population, but the company says it will expand the network to 97 percent of Americans if the T-Mobile deal is approved. In a partially redacted letter mistakenly posted to the Federal Communications Commission’s website for several hours, AT&T revealed it will cost the company $3.8 billion in additional capital expenditures to build out the LTE network to additional markets outside of its previous plan. The ex parte filing detailed a meeting between AT&T’s lawyers and FCC officials. The document was posted by AT&T’s law firm and has since been pulled from the FCC’s website. AT&T has published scores of heavily redacted documents in conjunction with the agency’s review of the T-Mobile merger.

The expansion’s price tag and the operator’s decision to deploy HSPA+ in the same rural markets by the end of next year put a kibosh on the proposal until AT&T decided to buy T-Mobile. The company said its merger with T-Mobile would spread the cost of the LTE expansion over a larger revenue base, allowing it to “better absorb the increased capital investment and lower returns associated with deploying LTE to over 97 percent of the U.S. population.”


Unredacted AT&T Filing Shows $3.8B Price Tag