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Sep. 25, 2009

It's almost a full year now since AT&T initiated a $954 million acquisition bid to buy Centennial Communications, and the wireless carrier says it's still waiting to get it approved by the regulatory agencies.

On Sep. 23, various executives who met with FCC staff say further delay will impose a severe burden on Centennial and its mobile customers. The acquisition involves slightly over one million subscribers.

Based in the municipality of Wall, New Jersey, Centennial Communications operates wireless networks in the Midwest and Southeast covering parts of 6 states and in Puerto Rico.

The U.S. markets where Centennial operates have 5 or 6 wireless carriers, according to documents supporting the transaction.

AT&T and Centennial entered into a signed agreement in November of last year.

On Sep. 16, the two companies said they expect the acquisition to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Besides FCC approval, the deal also involves a full review of the Department of Justice and that is where things appear to be bogging down for now.

In other merger news, on Aug. 26, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has acquired Torch Mobile, developers of the Iris browser for Windows Mobile. Lately, Research In Motion has been rumored to be working on Flash and SilverLight technology for its line of BlackBerry smartphones.

However, some wireless industry analysts are questioning whether the company’s current browsers are up to the challenge.

A better Internet browsing experience could be just what RIM needs right now, which in recent months has received some bad publicity for not adequately serving its own consumer market.

Critics also suggest that RIM is increasingly concentrating on the enterprise segment of the mobile industry, by offering such services as Microsoft's Exchange on its BlackBerry smartphones.

Meanwhile, slimmer mobile devices such as the iPhone and the Palm Pre are increasingly proficient at handling enterprise tasks as they are at doing consumer-oriented functions.

So far, the month of September has been rather quiet on the acquisition front.

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Source: The NTSB.