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WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel will hold a hearing on June 24 to examine the proposed purchase by AT&T of DirectTV, the committee said on Thursday.
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will hold its hearing on the same day to discuss plans by AT&T, the No. 2 U.S. cellular operator, to buy the largest U.S. satellite TV provider for $48.5 billion.
AT&T has said that it wanted to buy DirectTV in order to offer consumers access to video in a variety of media and to give the company scale to compete with larger cable competitors.
The deal is one of three roiling the cable and wireless landscape. The other two are Comcast's $45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable and Sprint's potential bid for TMobile US.
The Senate subcommittee did not announce witnesses for the hearing. Witnesses for the House hearing include AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson and DirecTV CEO Michael White. (Reporting by Diane Bartz and Ros Krasny; Editing by Peter Cooney and Sandra Maler)
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