AT&T's highly controversial $39 billion bid to become the biggest carrier in the United States by swallowing T-Mobile is over, eight months after it started.

The AT&T-Mobile merger is cooked, basically. Yesterday's turkey. AT&T's withdrawing the deal's application to the FCC and is looking at throwing Kardashian-sized $4 billion at the breakup fee. But wait! According to the New York Times, AT&T's got a secret, last-ditch plan to save the merger.

Uncle Sam says no to AT&T eating up T-Mobile: The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust suit against AT&T, Bloomberg reports. Things just got real.

Last week, a partly redacted document about the AT&T-Mobile merger was oh-so-briefly posted on the FCC's site by Arnold & Porter LLP, a law firm working on the deal for AT&T. Outlining some of AT&T's confidential LTE plans, it was quickly taken down. Well, here it is.

Lately, anytime the gaping maw of AT&T opens, no matter what it's talking about—puppies! or unlimited data (boring) or financial data—it has to slip in at least a tiny reference to how badly the T-Mobile merger has to happen, or all of our phones are going to explode and the puppies will die and go extinct forever.

If you've still got an unlimited AT&T data plan that you're holding onto for dear life to stream gigs and gigs of Spotify and Netflix and god knows what else, your life is about to suck a lot more.

There is plenty of comedy gold to be mined from the impending obliteration of one of the four major national carriers and the further consolidation of the telecom industry. These videos aren't quite there, but oh well. [Save the Internet via BoingBoing]