Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski personally called AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson a few days before Thanksgiving giving him advance notice he was moving to oppose AT&T’s merger with Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA.

Genachowski told Stephenson he was handing AT&T’s merger application over to an administrative judge — extremely bad news for the merger’s prospects.  The personal phone call was revealed Friday by AT&T, which disclosed it in an ex-parte communication filed with the FCC.

“During the call, Chairman (Julius) Genachowski indicated that he would be circulating to his fellow Commissioners a draft order approving the Qualcomm transaction and a draft order designating the T-Mobile transaction for an administrative hearing,” according to the filing. “Chairman Genachowski indicated that the draft designation order would likely be voted in the next several days or weeks but the administrative hearing would be deferred until after resolution of the pending litigation with the Department of Justice.”

It was the second piece of bad news received by AT&T last week, the first being notification the Justice Department had suddenly canceled a meeting it had planned to hold with AT&T about the merger and its antitrust implications.

Earlier today, Bloomberg News reported the FCC wasn’t so sure it would allow AT&T to refile its withdrawn merger application, which immediately brought new threats of legal action by the telecommunication company.

Now AT&T is considering a new strategy to save a merger given a 10 percent chance of succeeding, according to some analysts.  It will likely hold a fire sale of T-Mobile’s assets — up to 40 percent of them to be more exact, in order to satisfy regulators concerned about the merger’s anti-competitive implications.

The prospects make Wall Street bankers salivate with dreams of steep fees earned from structuring and marketing the equivalent of a corporate estate sale.

Among potential buyers might be regional players Leap Wireless, which owns Cricket, and MetroPCS.  The New York Times reports Mexico’s multi-billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, who owns Mexico’s América Móvil, might be interested in buying T-Mobile assets himself to boost the company’s American unit, better known as TracFone.

Sanford Bernstein’s Craig Moffett suggests it would be a mistake to ignore America’s largest cable operators, which own spectrum themselves and could integrate T-Mobile into a new mobile operator owned, controlled, and branded under the names of their respective cable owners.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Davis Says ATT Asset Sale May Be Tricky 11-28-11.flv[/flv]

Michael Nelson, analyst at Mizuho Securities USA Inc., and Jeffrey Davis, chief investment officer at Lee Munder Capital Group, discuss AT&T Inc.’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA Inc. AT&T, with its T-Mobile USA takeover facing regulatory opposition, is preparing the biggest remedy proposal yet to the Justice Department to salvage the $39 billion deal, according to a person familiar with the plan: an asset fire sale. From Bloomberg News.  (4 minutes)