The federal judge presiding over government’s antitrust case against AT&T and T-Mobile has set a date for the operators and the Justice Department lawyers to appear in court, just three weeks after the lawsuit was filed (CP: DOJ lawsuit dashed AT&T’s hopes of an easy merger review). U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has signed a court order asking AT&T, T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom and the DOJ to file a joint plan by Sept. 16 on scheduling and managing the proceedings and requiring them to appear in her D.C. court on Sept. 21 to discuss the possibility of a settlement, according to the New York Times.
AT&T is reportedly working on a settlement in which it would offer to divest as much a quarter of T-Mobile assets for the Justice Department’s stamp of approval. Whether the DOJ is amenable to such a compromise is another question. When it filed its suit on Aug. 31, the administration took an aggressive tone with AT&T, indicating its problems with the merger weren’t limited to market-by-market concerns, but rather with the elimination of a major low-cost operator nationwide. Still, DOJ attorneys held out the possibility of settlement, saying they have an “open door.”
Even if AT&T comes to terms with the DOJ, it must still face the FCC, which has signaled it has problems with the $39 billion acquisition as well (Unfiltered: FCC (and everyone else) weighs in of DOJ’s AT&T suit). On Tuesday, Sprint piled on filing its own lawsuit seeking to block the merger (CP: Sprint doubles down on government’s AT&T antitrust suit).