Survey Slams Telecom Mega-Mergers
A recently released University of Connecticut survey says large corporate enterprises believe the proposed $16 billion SBC Communications/AT&T and the $8.5 billion Verizon Communications/MCI mergers will have a "strong negative impact" on pricing, innovation, quality of service and levels of competition in the business telecom marketplace. UC's Center for Survey Research and Analysis (CSRA)  commissioned by the Alliance for Competition in Telecommunications (ACTel) that opposes the "mega-mergers"  says it interviewed 100 telecom managers random-sampled from Fortune 1000 companies "to candidly assess the attitudes of America's largest businesses on the impact of the proposed mergers." The CSRA survey, "Views of The Proposed AT&T/SBC and MCI/Verizon Mergers: From the Perspective of Fortune 1000 AT&T and MCI Customers," was conducted from July 21 to Aug. 22. Of the companies interviewed, 79 percent were AT&T customers and 49 percent were MCI customers. "The most damning aspect of the survey findings is that these fears are expressed by AT&T's and MCI's own customers. This should be a wakeup call for policymakers  the marketplace is not happy with these mergers," says Heather Gold, senior vice president of government relations at competitive carrier XO Communications (a leading member of ACTel).
Survey Slams Telecom Mega-Mergers