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Last month we reported the merger of XM-Sirius as indicated by Federal Communications Commission. Now after a long delay, the FCC has approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., last night. The decision came out after a 3-2 voting which was in favour of the merger. The $3.6 billion merger finally came to an end after a vote by Deborah Taylor Tate. Her vote came after both the companies voluntarily agreed to pay a fine of $19.7 million in order to settle a previous violation of FCC rule.
Confirming the final vote on Friday night, the FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin said:
The merger is in the public interest and will provide consumers with greater flexibility and choices.
FCC was the only obstacle in the way of this merger. The merger was approved by the shareholders of both the companies back in 2007. XM & Sirius were the only satellite stations in the U.S. and this merger will probably help in constructing a monopoly. Though the company executives don’t agree with this, rather they are saying that the satellite radio faces more competition from internet music services, music playing phones and online music stores. What does that means? It simply means that first they used to pull each others leg and now they are going to hit the online services. Until there is another satellite station, the court is all theirs.
Spells failure on part of both satellite broadcast companies, kind of like digital TV that does not seem to work for many.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkm7I7SAbC0
Its about time. They should have taken this long with other mergers like whirlpool - maytag