The Rationale Behind Verizon's Interest in Yahoo's Web Business - Bloomberg Business

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"What makes a Verizon-Yahoo deal more likely is that other carriers might have less appetite for a big Yahoo acquisition. Sprint Corp., without backing from majority owner SoftBank Group Corp. is too cash-strapped to pursue a deal. T-Mobile US Inc. has been critical of other carriers’ moves into media and is focused more on the business of delivering music and video. AT&T Inc. just purchased DirecTV for $48.5 billion and is working on integrating the two companies.
Yahoo, plus AOL and an established Web-advertising business, would go a long way toward helping the wireless carrier compete with other tech giants, according to Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber, a closely-held data network company.
"Verizon wants to compete with Google and Facebook, which are probably the biggest personal-data collection machines in the world," Newby said."

The Rationale Behind Verizon's Interest in Yahoo's Web Business - Bloomberg Business