Of all the people to defend AT&T’s $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam comes as one of the biggest surprises.

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday, McAdam said the massive deal has to occur, unless the government can better focus on giving telecoms more wireless spectrum, according to the mobile site Boy Genius Report.

“I have taken the position that the AT&T merger with T-Mobile was kind of like gravity,” he told investors. “It had to occur, because you had … T-Mobile that had the spectrum but didn’t have the capital to build it out. AT&T needed the spectrum, they didn’t have it in order to take care of their customers, and so that match had to occur.”