The merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA will nearly achieve President Obama’s goal of bringing broadband to 98 percent of Americans within five years, said Rick Boucher, the former U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 9th congressional district.
The union marks a “very important step" in “achieving universal broadband in the near future," said Boucher, a Democrat who left office in January after serving in the House for 28 years.
Within six years, AT&T will bring broadband to 97 percent of the nation’s population, said Boucher, who now serves as honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) and heads up the government strategies practice group of Sidley Austin, a powerful law firm with offices around the world.
In his State of the Union Address earlier this year, President Obama set the goal of enabling businesses to provide high-speed wireless services to at least 98 percent of Americans within five years. In a recent report to Congress, the Federal Communications Commission found that roughly 26 million Americans still don’t have access to high-speed Internet service.
AT&T has said that its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA will enable the company to reach roughly 97 percent of the population with its fourth-generation LTE network. AT&T’s plans represent “nearly 55 million more Americans than our pre-merger plans and millions more than any other provider has committed to service," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.
Dallas-based AT&T has cited its broadband plans as one of the main public benefits of a merger that would knock out T-Mobile USA, the nation’s fourth-largest wireless provider with 33.63 million customers. AT&T has said the merger will solve its need for additional spectrum.
In a letter sent this week to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, several high-profile companies – including Avaya, Brocade, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, Research in Motion and Yahoo! – have lined up to support the deal.
In the letter, the companies noted that “wireless networks are struggling to keep pace with the" escalating demand for wireless broadband.
“Given the network capacity challenges, policymakers must give meaningful consideration to AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile as a means of addressing their near term wireless broadband capacity needs," the letter states.
