Today in Mobile
The big story this morning is Qualcomm’s move to shutter its lifeless MediaFLO business and sell a swath of spectrum licenses to AT&T for $1.93 billion. And there are plenty of interesting angles to the development: Barron’s notes that Qualcomm scored a big payoff for the spectrum, while Time points out that AT&T users shouldn’t expect the deal to pay off in the form of better 3G coverage. But the biggest question was posed by Om, who wondered whether the FCC will actually approve the pact. The FCC has said repeatedly that one of its key priorities is to encourage innovation by stoking competition, and it is exploring ways to help newcomers and smaller service providers. So I expect the commission to extract some concessions from AT&T for this one to go through.