One year ago, AT&T and DirecTV jointly announced a deal worth $48.5 billion in which DirecTV would be acquired in a stock-and-cash transaction for $95 per share. But the termination date of the deal, May 18th, 2015 has quickly approached and regulators have yet to approve the merger. Today, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the two companies have agreed to extend the proposal agreement for a short, but undetermined amount of time.
Of course, other MSOs, ISPs and television service providers are not so happy about the proposed merger. Earlier this week Dish Network, Cogent, and other groups asked for more regulations regarding the purchase. And, The Fool writes about Netflix putting their two-cents in. However, an article in The Wall Street Journal predicts authorities will not oppose the merger, but will likely apply conditions.
WSJ wrote, “the AT&T deal doesn’t raise the same problems for regulators as Comcast’s combination, which would have created a giant service provider controlling access to more than half of what the FCC considers high-speed broadband Internet service.”
And, according to Reuters sources, “regulators at both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are nearing a decision that is poised to clear the deal with some conditions.”
