AT&T has agreed to sell its holdings in Mexican telecommunications company América Móvil to Carlos Slim's holding company Inmobiliaria Carso in a move that sets up the Dallas-based wireless operator to acquire DirecTV.

AT&T stated Friday that it would sell its estimated $6 billion stake in América Móvil to Slim. AT&T's 8.3 percent stake includes 24 percent of América Móvil's voting shares. Slim and his six children already own around half of América Móvil. AT&T has been an investor in América Móvil for almost a quarter of a century, making it one of the company's longest partnerships.

"América Móvil recognizes the great value that the AT&T partnership produced for both parties in these more than 20 years," Slim's company said.

The deal isn't a total surprise. AT&T already mentioned that it would look for a way to get rid of its equity in América Móvil when the company announced it intends to acquire DirecTV for close to $50 billion. The reason? Because owning América Móvil, which competes with DirecTV for pay-TV customers in Latin America as well, is a conflict of interests, and certainly something U.S. regulators in charge of approving the merger will scrutinize. DirecTV currently has around 18 million subscribers in Latin America, and the television provider is looking to expand in some of the world's fastest-growing tech markets.

U.S. lawmakers are in the midst of two giant mergers in the telecommunications industry: Comcast-Time Warner and AT&T-DirecTV. There's also the likely possibility of Sprint and T-Mobile teaming up soon, although nothing official has been announced. Regulators are asking themselves one major question: Will consolidation improve customer choices or hinder the amount of options consumers have?

"We're concerned that there may be too much, too rapid consolidation in the telecommunications industry," Michigan Democrat John Conyers said at a Senate hearing Tuesday concerning an AT&T-DirecTV merger. "This ongoing wave of consolidation will without question result in fewer firms and may harm consumers by limiting choices and also raising prices after all. ... I will be looking and listening to make sure that we are not moving in the wrong direction."

AT&T, however, doesn't seem to be worried.

"This is not Comcast/Time Warner, this is not two cable companies getting together, this is not Sprint and T-Mobile," CEO Randall Stephenson told a House Judiciary Committee panel. "We're putting (DirecTV's satellite) TV product with our broadband wireless product. ... There is not a content player per se in this transaction."

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