NEW YORK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc Chief ExecutiveRandall Stephenson said on Tuesday his company would buywireless assets in Europe if there were available at the rightprice.
Stephenson declined to comment on potential deals during anappearance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. Theexecutive said European operators were far behind the Unitedstates in investments in wireless broadband, mainly becauseregulatory policies regarding spectrum licenses discouragedinvestments in the region.
But he said when the policies change, broadband investmentsshould take off.
"Those things I believe happen over time," he said, addingthat any move by AT&T to enter Europe would depend on thevaluation of any assets available.
As growth slows in the U.S. wireless market, analysts havespeculated that AT&T could buy overseas assets from VodafoneGroup Plc, which agreed to sell its stake in U.S.wireless operator Verizon Wireless to joint venture partnerVerizon Communications Inc.
Meanwhile, in the United States Stephenson said he believes"large scale" mergers and acquisitions were not likely in thenext three years.
He cited the U.S. Justice Department's blocking AT&T's 2011plan to buy T-Mobile US Inc for $39 billion and therecent decision by the agency's antitrust arm to stop two majorU.S. airlines from merging.
"It will remove all questions in your mind about how the DoJthinks about going from four national players to three,"Stephenson said.
In what would be a much smaller deal, Stephenson said AT&Twas close to selling its wireless broadcast towers but did notgive details.
He said AT&T was not seeing an impact from increasedcompetition in the U.S. market from rivals such as T-Mobile,except among price-sensitive customers.