AT&T bids for Yahoo, countering Verizon offer

The two biggest US telecom providers look to be facing off in a fight to own Yahoo. AT&T has submitted an offer to acquire Yahoo’s Internet business, after initially staying on the sidelines, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.

Verizon has been widely considered by Wall Street as the leading candidate to acquire Yahoo. Verizon execs have expressed interest in combining Yahoo’s huge online audience with AOL, which it acquired last year for $4.4 billion. “We can’t talk about Yahoo ... but that’s a possibility to gain greater scale,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said Tuesday, speaking at JP Morgan’s Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference.

However, Verizon did not submit the highest offer in the first round of bidding, which included offers ranging between $4 billion and $8 billion, according to the Bloomberg report.

AT&T’s play for Yahoo is likely fueled in part by a desire to keep the online company out of the hands of its chief rival. Yahoo also could serve as an anchor for AT&T’s ambitions to build up a bigger push into digital-media and streaming video: The telco is planning to launch three new DirecTV over-the-top video services in the US later this year. In addition, it’s trying to reach millennial video viewers through Otter Media, a joint venture with Chernin Group whose holdings include Fullscreen.