Key AT&T executives will visit Brazil next week as the company expands its Latin American foothold and looks to participate in the country's spectrum auction at the end of the year.

According to people familiar with the matter via the Dallas Morning News, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson will be leading the team to Brazil during the week of June 14. The purpose? To establish ties with the country in order to properly participate in a spectrum auction at the end of the year through telecomm firm Sky Brazil.

AT&T is currently under review by the U.S. government after having proposed last year to buy out satellite-TV provider DirecTV for close to $50 billion. DirecTV also holds a 93 percent stake in Sky Brazil, all of which would then go become AT&T's. AT&T hopes to bolster Sky Brazil's footprint by buying up some of the 2.5GHz and 700MHz airwaves that are being offered in 4,600 municipalities at the end of 2015.

The AT&T and DirecTV merger proposal passed Brazil antitrust regulators last year in July, and officials agree that for a foreign company to be competitive in Brazil, it needs to acquire a local business. 

DirecTV has been a key part of AT&T's strategy to expand south of the border. AT&T even sold off its stake in America Movil, a Carlos Slim-owned telecomm firm in Mexico, so that DirecTV's Latin American offerings wouldn't represent a conflict of interests. In fact, DirecTV's Latin American presence is part of what makes the company so appealing to AT&T.

"DIRECTV is the best option for us because they have the premier brand in pay TV, the best content relationships, and a fast-growing Latin American business," Stephenson said.

"DIRECTV's satellite platform's broad reach remains advantaged when compared with cable and telco in Latin America," reads a May press release. "Latin America has an underpenetrated pay TV market (about 40 percent of households subscribe to pay TV) and a growing middle class, and is DIRECTV's fastest growing."

U.S. regulators are currently reviewing AT&T's request to acquire DirecTV. Government officials have expressed distaste to large telecomm mergers over the past year -- so much that they have discouraged Sprint and T-Mobile from joining as well as, more recently, Comcast and Time Warner. In both cases the government never officially blocked the deal. Instead, the buying company pulled out after months of lobbying due to government's hesitation at too much consolidation. AT&T, however, believes its pursuit of DirecTV is different.

"This is not Comcast/Time Warner, this is not two cable companies getting together, this is not Sprint and T-Mobile," Stephenson told a House Judiciary Committee panel last year.

"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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