AT&T and T-Mobile have announced that they will remove their pending applications to the FCC for their merger bid. This comes after statements from the FCC chairman 'strongly opposing the merger'. In doing so, AT&T has agreed to pay T-Mobile 4 Billion US dollars to cover accounting and other costs that this may have caused. While AT&T would still like to merge, it is unlikely that they will gain antitrust clearance from the Department of Justice. It's the antitrust aspect that this is mostly about, in that AT&T has said that they want this move to free up the FCC to consider all options, and focus both AT&T and T-Mobile on the pending antitrust.
The 4 Billion that will be paid out to T-Mobile will consist of 3 Billion in cash, and then 1 Billion in Spectrum infrastructure. This is more or less a public acknowledgement that the deal will likely fail, and is more or less preparations for it to do so. Also, on Wednesday, the FCC chairman called for the other FCC commissioners to hold a hearing, in which AT&T would be forced to show how this merger is good in the public interest. However, now that they've dropped the FCC application, it will probably delay any hearing in the FCC about the matter. A recent report within the FCC has claimed that an AT&T and T-Mobile merger would harm competition in 99 out of the top 100 markets, so for the FCC to push such a hearing is basically saying that the deal wont go through them(at a minimum, it likely wont go through with the Department of Justice either).
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