The wireless service provider, AT&T has recently hired Bank of America’s Merril Lynch to help advise the company on the sale of as much as $8 billion in assets in an effort to gain the government’s approval of its planned T-Mobile acquisition. The Wall Street Journal is saying that AT&T is trying to sell off its network assets in an attempt to  water down its market power, but most of the assets could actually be T-Mobile’s holdings.”As we said on the day we announced the marger with T-Mobile USA, we anticipate there will be some divestitures, as we had in past mergers, but any speculation about the amount of divestitures is premature,” an AT&T spokesperson told The Journal. Earlier in the week, the Federal Communications Commission pumped the brakes on the merger when it announced that it will roll in AT&T’s planned acquisition of Qualcomm’s FLOTV spectrum into its overall decision on the T-Mobile purchase. AT&T has mentioned that the acquisition is on schedule for approval in March of next year. As usual, stay tuned by following us on our new Facebook, Twitter, and/or subscribing to our RSS feed. Authors: