Several additional AT&T competitors and interest groups expressed...

already filed a joint petition to deny, while the Competitive Carriers Association asked the FCC to attach conditions to any approval of the merger (CD Sept 30 p8). Wireless carrier NTCH, which does business under the Clear Talk brand, said in its petition to deny that it’s concerned the elimination of Leap will further erode NTCH’s cadre of CDMA roaming partners. NTCH has roaming arrangements with Leap in markets where NTCH does not hold spectrum. If Leap merges with AT&T, it will eliminate one of the last “large-scale” CDMA carriers, “leaving smaller carriers like NTCH without viable roaming partners outside of the nationwide carriers,” NTCH said. The FCC has already permitted the “extinction” of CDMA roaming partners such as MetroPCS and Atlantic Tele-Network, and their CDMA networks “are now fated for dismemberment” as part of their integration into GSM-based T-Mobile US and AT&T. “With each kill by the majors, smaller providers like NTCH are also weakened by being placed at an even greater competitive disadvantage, both in terms of spectrum assets and in terms of reasonable roaming arrangements to enable nationwide coverage,” NTCH said. The carrier recommended that if the FCC approves the merger, it should require AT&T to continue maintaining Leap’s CDMA network for “at least a reasonable period of time” and require AT&T to honor existing roaming arrangements between Leap and other carriers. The FCC should also require AT&T to offer carriers with existing CDMA roaming arrangements with Leap comparable roaming rates, terms and conditions if those carriers end up moving to GSM during the next three years, NTCH said (http://bit.ly/18GICmx). Broadvox-CLEC said in its petition to deny that the FCC should deny the AT&T’s effort to expand its prepaid market presence given “AT&T’s ongoing efforts through its long distance affiliates to disrupt the prepaid calling card market, including routine resort to self-help nonpayment, its failure to file good faith disputes, and its brazen flouting of the Commission’s VoIP Symmetry and other rules and orders.” If the FCC does approve the merger, it should require AT&T to “refrain” from self-help nonpayment on undisputed amounts to other carriers, report as “material disputes” to the FCC and abide by FCC rules, Broadvox said (http://bit.ly/15F6UAx). The Greenlining Institute argued in its petition to deny that an AT&T-Leap merger would harm competition by eliminating Leap as a competitor, particularly in the “value-conscious” market for prepaid wireless services. The merger would also harm competition by eliminating AT&T’s Aio Wireless prepaid brand as a competitor in an “undetermined” number of markets, Greenlining said (http://bit.ly/1fX9STh). AT&T has said it plans to keep Leap’s Cricket prepaid brand alive post-merger (CD July 25 p10). The merger also has the potential to limit low-income consumers’ access to prepaid services, Greenlining said, saying AT&T and Leap “have failed to provide sufficient information about their plan to migrate Leap customers to AT&T’s network.” The merger would also eliminate an unspecified number of jobs, Greenlining said. If the FCC approves the AT&T-Leap merger, it should include conditions that would require AT&T to continue serving Cricket subscribers and to require AT&T to fulfill its “commitments to pass the economic benefits of the transaction through to customers.” The group’s petition to deny is based only on currently available information, and it said it’s continuing to investigate the merger’s details. Greenlining is reviewing confidential documents AT&T and Leap filed with the FCC, and planned to meet Monday with California-based members of AT&T’s senior leadership. The group said it “hopes to gain greater clarity about this transaction after this meeting and after a comprehensive review of the unredacted documents. Greenlining hopes that a mutual and reciprocated effort to learn about the interests involved in this matter will help open the possibility of settlement or other resolution.” Youghiogheny Communications (http://bit.ly/1bmti0X) and David Smith, a Cricket customer in Douglasville, Ga., also filed petitions to deny (http://bit.ly/19QVHJ7). The Rural Wireless Association (RWA) said the FCC should hold off on a decision on the deal until the FCC wraps up its spectrum aggregation proceeding. “In addition to removing yet another facilities-based operator from the mobile wireless playing field (which reduces consumer choice) this proposed transaction also results in AT&T holding an even greater and even more disproportionate amount of spectrum in over a third of the country’s counties where both AT&T and Leap currently hold licenses,” RWA said (http://bit.ly/1eUwiWb). “A final resolution to the Commission’s current open proceeding on spectrum holdings would provide clarity on just how much spectrum companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless may amass before genuine competition is tossed aside for good."