The United States Justice Department has filed to block AT&T's proposed buyout of T-Mobile today, saying that the merger would "remove a significant competitive force from the market."

The potential deal, a $39 billion dollar affair which would have made AT&T the US's largest wireless carrier, was first announced in March, and would have greatly expanded AT&T's network and subscriber base. Opponents of the deal concluded, as did the DoJ, that the deal would leave too few competitors in the market, and would leave Sprint (a distant third to AT&T and Verizon) much less able to compete with the larger companies.

Source: Bloomberg