AT&T has closed its acquisition of BellSouth, after clearing a final regulatory hurdle.

On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had approved the $86 billion deal, one day after AT&T made a number of concessions to help push the acquisition through, including a pledge to maintain a "neutral network" for two years after the merger.

The deal is the largest telecommunications merger in U.S. history, and the latest in a wave of telecom consolidation that has left only two major players -- AT&T and Verizon -- standing in the U.S. market.

AT&T announced plans to buy BellSouth in March, saying that it expected to save $2 billion in annual expenses as a result of the acquisition, but the deal had been deadlocked at the FCC until Friday, when two of the regulatory body's commissioners reversed their positions.

Critics have said that the deal would be a step toward the monopoly conditions that existed prior to AT&T's breakup in the 1980s, but the FCC said Friday that consumers would see a number of benefits, including increased deployment of broadband, more competition in the video services market, and enhanced national security.

Michael Copps, a Democratic commissioner who had previously opposed the deal called it "a modest victory for American consumers," in a statement released Friday.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.