AT&T and T-Mobile Deal—Dead

On Tuesday, AT&T officially announced that it has decided to drop its bid to acquire Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA.

AT&T’s Randall Stephenson and T-Mobile’s Rene Obermann both agreed that the costs of fighting for the deal were too high. Opposition has been mounting against the acquisition from U.S. regulators and several competing wireless companies.

AT&T’s bid for the year’s most infamous acquisition to become the largest U.S. wireless carrier is over.

After nine long months of arguing, fighting, battling, and reviewing—not to mention teasing consumers with the horror of the merge—the deal is finally dead. There hasn’t been one month since the bid was announced when the acquisition has not made an appearance in telecom news. It feels almost as if the death of the AT&T and T-Mobile deal marks the end of an era.

AT&T failed to convince the U.S. Justice Department, which sued to block the transaction in August. The merge was also facing possible opposition from the Federal Communications Commission, which had been on the wall about the deal for months.

The move to abandon T-Mobile comes a week after the judge in the Justice Department lawsuit agreed to allow AT&T time to decide whether or not to revise the transaction. AT&T fought hard to the end—ready to charge forth with their $10 billion back up plan to pursue the deal.

Now that the acquisition is officially dead, AT&T will have to pay Deutsche Telekom $4 billion in termination fees.