Antitrust Group Urges ‘Meaningful’ Conditions on Bell Mergers

Regulators must place “serious and meaningful” conditions on the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers to prevent competitive harm and “remonopolization,” the American Antitrust Institute (AAI) said Wednesday. The mergers probably will be approved “one way or another,” said AAI President Albert Foer. “Only binding conditions can prevent violations of law.” AAI officials said the FCC must impose 4 conditions and enforce them through strong oversight: 1) The merging firms must expand their business operations outside their traditional service regions; 2) Regulators must impose “network neutrality” ensuring price and service quality are the same no matter what network choices end users make. AAI Senior Research Fellow Jonathan Rubin said this concept goes beyond content neutrality to include matters like the “speed of connectivity.” Rubin said “if this sounds like the old common carrier regulation, so be it; that’s the price you pay for remonopolization”; 3) The firms must divest overlapping facilities and customers “to prevent monopolization in specific locations and to encourage the emergence of additional end-to-end networks” and 4) The merged firms must offer “naked DSL” allowing consumers to get Internet access from telecom carriers and voice from other providers.
[SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Edie Herman]
(Not available online)