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AT&T Drops T-Mobile Deal

AT&T has agreed with Deutsche Telekom to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA, which began in March of this year. “AT&T will continue to be aggressive in leading the mobile Internet revolution,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO.  “Over the past four years we have invested more in our networks than any other U.S. company. As a result, today we deliver best-in-class mobile broadband speeds – connecting smartphones, tablets and emerging devices at a record pace – and we are well under way with our nationwide 4G LTE deployment.

To reflect the break-up considerations due Deutsche Telekom, AT&T will recognize a pretax accounting charge of $4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2011.  Additionally, AT&T will enter a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom.

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U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs — NPR

The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own, writes Andrea Hsu. 

The Coca-Cola Company commits $1.1B to Microsoft Cloud and AI partnership

The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft announced a five-year partnership on Tuesday. As part of the collaboration, Coca-Cola has committed $1.1 billion to Microsoft Cloud and generative AI capabilities. 

Apple deletes WhatsApp, Threads from China app store on orders from Beijing — CNN

Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, writes Juliana Liu.

Singtel, Vonage partner to integrate Paragon platform

Singtel has announced a partnership with Vonage, a cloud communications company and subsidiary of Ericsson, to help enterprises and telcos innovate and scale their services through Singtel's orchestration platform, Paragon.