Stock lawsuit possible in telecom merger plan
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Former MediaOne Group executives are exploring a class-action lawsuit over Cingular's insistence that AT&amp;T Wireless stock options, issued by the millions to employees and former employees of MediaOne, AT&amp;T and AT&amp;T Wireless, be exercised as soon as the merger closes, people involved in the effort say.
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WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to consider a lawsuit against major Wall Street firms accused of conspiring to manipulate prices on newly issued shares during the stock market boom of the 1990s.
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Sprint and Nextel, two large US mobile companies, are discussing a possible $70bn merger, according to newspaper reports.
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Sprint Corp.&#39;s enterprise operation, including its nationwide fiber-optic network, suddenly is looking like a swan and not a lame duck, as Verizon Wireless assesses the possibility of making a bid for Sprint in the boiling cell-phone merger scene.
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A start-up wireless company has  proposed a high-stakes debate with Verizon Communications  before U.S. regulators considering how the government should  conduct an auction of valuable wireless spectrum.
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Wall Street was abuzz Friday over a potential merger between Sprint and Nextel, though the companies declined to comment on a slew of news reports that they are negotiating to combine to create a celluar provider that would almost rival Cingular Wireless
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By Alicia Wallace, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.  May 25--A local holding company founded by former area telecommunications  executives and bankrolled by five institutional investors announced plans  Thursday to acquire a Pennsylvania telecom in a deal valued at $60 million.
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The proposed merger of Sprint and Nextel Communications could face a rocky start as the companies work to run and eventually merge two wireless technologies without breaking the bank or losing customers.
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AT&T Inc , Verizon Wireless and  Deutsche Telekom's  T-Mobile USA on Tuesday announced  flat rate plans for unlimited calls in the United States,  raising investor concerns that a price war could break out and  sending shares lower.
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A lawsuit by more than 10,000 shareholders against German telecommunications operator Deutsche Telekom is to begin in April, the Financial Times Deutschland said Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. senators questioned Thursday whether members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to enforce merger conditions that AT&T Inc. agreed to in its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp. Democratic members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee questioned why FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate issued a joint statement while approving the merger saying the FCC couldn't broadly enforce some of AT&T's concessions. "What I find difficult to understand is that ... you said that you do not intend to stand by the deal that was reached," said Senator Daniel Inouye, the committee chairman and a Hawaii Democrat. Martin and Tate, both Republicans, had protested a net neutrality condition, preventing AT&T from giving priority transmission speeds to its own or its partners' Web content for at least two years. The net neutrality conditions "very well may cause greater problems than the speculative problems they seek to address," Martin and Tate said in the statement Dec. 29. Martin on Thursday said he intends to hold AT&T to the net neutrality agreement, but he doesn't plan to impose those standards on other broadband carriers. "Since [AT&T] volunteered to do that, we would enforce that," he said. "That does not mean we were changing our policy." Martin also suggested another part of the agreement setting out wholesale rates for some data services may be unenforceable. "What is your legal authority as chairman ... to not enforce something you just did?" asked Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat. AT&T agreed to lower the wholesale special access prices for DS1, DS3, and Ethernet services available to some regional telecom carriers and large businesses, but not to large competitors. But the FCC's policy in the past has been that wholesale discounts should apply to all customers, Martin said. "That tariff actually has some components that I believe are illegal under the commission precedent," Martin said. "They can file [the proposed discount], but I'm not committing to approving something that would be in violation of our precedent. We don't allow for that kind of discrimination." But Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat who pushed for conditions on the AT&T merger, noted that the FCC adopted the AT&T merger conditions on a 4-0 vote. "It's hard for me to understand why we can't implement something we adopted unanimously," he said. Senators also urged the FCC to work on ways to get broadband service to rural, inner city and poor areas. The FCC on Wednesday issued a report saying the number of high-speed lines in the U.S. increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, from 51.2 million to 64.6 million lines in service. The number of high-speed lines grew by 21 percent in the second half of 2005. Senators also pointed to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's latest study saying the U.S. ranks 12th in broadband adoption rate among industrialized nations. Commissioner Michael Copps called on Congress and the FCC to develop a national broadband strategy. He called the U.S. broadband adoption rates "woeful." "I am really worried that we can go into the 21st century and have a bigger digital divide in this country ... than we had back in the days of plain, old telephone service in the 20th century," he said. "This just isn't feel-good liberal theory -- we're talking about the competitiveness of the United States of America."
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Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies Inc.'s plan to form a global communications equipment giant may run into a roadblock next week in a state court in New Jersey.
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A board member of US media giant Dow Jones may face civil action over breaches of securities laws.
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Faced with growing pressure to upgrade their networks and compete with larger rivals, Sprint and Nextel Communications are poised to join forces in a $35 billion takeover that will give the combined entity a value of around $70 billion.
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General Electric Co.  and Pearson Plc  may challenge News Corp.'s  $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. , with a plan that could let Dow Jones's controlling family to keep an interest in the company, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported on their Web sites on Sunday.
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WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is ready to hear from lawyers from Microsoft and AT&T as it considers a long-running patent dispute between the industry giants.
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The proposed $35 billion merger of Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications could mean changes for Kirkland-based Nextel Partners Inc.