The FCC on Wednesday asked AT&T for evidence to justify its view that its $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile was necessary for its LTE network. Following an inadvertent leak by AT&T's lawyers that revealed it only needed $3.8 billion to reach its touted 95 to 97 percent coverage of the US population, agency officials wanted to know what the T-Mobile merger would do that the much cheaper proposal would not. Concerns exist that AT&T is using rural 4G expansion as a pretext for an ultimate goal of eliminating a major competitor.
