It will offer the slowest broadband Internet access on a standalone basis for about US$20 a month, easing concerns it might have too much clout and force consumers into more expensive service bundles.
The merger creates a company with 70 million phone customers and 10 million high-speed Internet users. It also has about 315,000 employees -- though that number is expected to fall -- and combined revenue of an estimated US$121 billion.
The deal gives AT&T full control of Cingular Wireless, the largest US mobile operator, up to now jointly owned with BellSouth.
The deal puts back together much of the "Ma Bell" empire broken up in the 1980s.
But the merger has also drawn fire from consumer groups and others who claim it will limit competition and give the combined company too much control of the Internet.
FCC commissioner Michael Kopps, who held out for several weeks before joining in Friday's 4-0 vote, said the deal was helped by the last-minute concessions.
"We celebrate today not a triumph for huge corporate mergers but a modest victory for American consumers," Kopps said.
"I believe that we have made this transaction at least minimally acceptable to American consumers," he said.
It brings price reductions rather than price increases, more broadband rather than less, a free and open Internet rather than one rife with opportunities to degrade and limit, and numerous other safeguards and protections," Kopps said.
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