Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, at the CTIA Wireless conference Tuesday. He was challenging AT&T’s recent assertions that the government’s rejection late last year of AT&T’s effort to buy T-Mobile (see Death of a deal: Effects on AT&T, T-Mobile, consumers, more) have forced AT&T to raise its customers’ prices — which was one of the government’s concerns about the merger. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson reportedly complained about a spectrum shortage at the Milken Institute’s annual global conference last week, saying “since that deal got killed, our data prices have gone up 30 percent.” GigaOm’s Kevin Fitchard argues that AT&T is “nowhere near exhausting its airwaves.”
“
Some have recently argued that the government’s review of transactions in the wireless space — or, let’s be frank, review of one specific transaction — is somehow causing a shortage of spectrum and leading that company to raise prices for consumers. The overall amount of spectrum available has not changed, except for steps we’re taking to add new spectrum on the market.
”
