AT&T Merger Vote Unlikely Until '07
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By Sanford Nowlin, San Antonio Express-News  Dec. 14--The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday it won't  vote on AT&T Inc.'s merger with BellSouth Corp. at its Dec. 20 meeting, making  it unlikely the telecommunications mega-merger can be approved by the end of  the year.
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The sole US regulator who could vote to break a deadlock over approval conditions on AT&T Inc's proposed $85bn acquisition of rival BellSouth Corp has refused to do so because of potential ethical concerns.
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Time Warner Inc.  said on Thursday it will make a decision on AOL's future by the end of the year, addressing rampant speculation the online unit could be spun off or merged with another company.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. senators questioned Thursday whether members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to enforce merger conditions that AT&T Inc. agreed to in its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp. Democratic members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee questioned why FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate issued a joint statement while approving the merger saying the FCC couldn't broadly enforce some of AT&T's concessions. "What I find difficult to understand is that ... you said that you do not intend to stand by the deal that was reached," said Senator Daniel Inouye, the committee chairman and a Hawaii Democrat. Martin and Tate, both Republicans, had protested a net neutrality condition, preventing AT&T from giving priority transmission speeds to its own or its partners' Web content for at least two years. The net neutrality conditions "very well may cause greater problems than the speculative problems they seek to address," Martin and Tate said in the statement Dec. 29. Martin on Thursday said he intends to hold AT&T to the net neutrality agreement, but he doesn't plan to impose those standards on other broadband carriers. "Since [AT&T] volunteered to do that, we would enforce that," he said. "That does not mean we were changing our policy." Martin also suggested another part of the agreement setting out wholesale rates for some data services may be unenforceable. "What is your legal authority as chairman ... to not enforce something you just did?" asked Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat. AT&T agreed to lower the wholesale special access prices for DS1, DS3, and Ethernet services available to some regional telecom carriers and large businesses, but not to large competitors. But the FCC's policy in the past has been that wholesale discounts should apply to all customers, Martin said. "That tariff actually has some components that I believe are illegal under the commission precedent," Martin said. "They can file [the proposed discount], but I'm not committing to approving something that would be in violation of our precedent. We don't allow for that kind of discrimination." But Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat who pushed for conditions on the AT&T merger, noted that the FCC adopted the AT&T merger conditions on a 4-0 vote. "It's hard for me to understand why we can't implement something we adopted unanimously," he said. Senators also urged the FCC to work on ways to get broadband service to rural, inner city and poor areas. The FCC on Wednesday issued a report saying the number of high-speed lines in the U.S. increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, from 51.2 million to 64.6 million lines in service. The number of high-speed lines grew by 21 percent in the second half of 2005. Senators also pointed to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's latest study saying the U.S. ranks 12th in broadband adoption rate among industrialized nations. Commissioner Michael Copps called on Congress and the FCC to develop a national broadband strategy. He called the U.S. broadband adoption rates "woeful." "I am really worried that we can go into the 21st century and have a bigger digital divide in this country ... than we had back in the days of plain, old telephone service in the 20th century," he said. "This just isn't feel-good liberal theory -- we're talking about the competitiveness of the United States of America."
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The rumors of a Nextel Communications&#39; combination with Sprint aren&#39;t ringing the same regulatory alarm bells as the larger acquisition of AT&amp;T Wireless by Cingular Wireless.
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 18  â AT&Tâs proposed buyout of BellSouth was thrown into doubt Monday when Robert M. McDowell, a member of the Federal Communications Commission and a former telecommunications industry lobbyist, said he would not be voting on the deal.
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Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell announced yesterday that he would disqualify himself from voting on AT&T's proposed purchase of BellSouth on ethical grounds, depriving the FCC of a potential swing vote that could have broken the stalemate among its Democratic and Republican...
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US telecom giant AT&amp;T is not considering a bid for British mobile phone operator Vodafone, but is likely to make smaller acquisitions to better meet the needs of multinational companies, the company&#39;s chief executive said in an interview published Tuesday.
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U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell will be permitted to cast the tie- breaking vote on AT&T Inc.'s  proposed acquisition of BellSouth Corp., the agency's general counsel said on Friday.
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AT&T is still struggling to convey the merger of itself with Cingular, and is taking another crack at its brand identity to beef up the message. But it is dangerously staying on the fence about who it is as a company.
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U.S. senators questioned Thursday whether members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to enforce merger conditions that AT&T Inc. agreed to in its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp.
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AT&T Inc. hasn't decided whether it will bid for the highly-desirable 700MHz band because it doesn't know if it can build a profitable business given the open-access rules set for the wireless spectrum by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in July.
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U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell will be permitted to cast the tie-breaking vote on AT&T Inc.'s  proposed acquisition of BellSouth Corp. , the agency's general counsel said on Friday.
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With the brand-sharing alliance between Yahoo and AT&T due to expire in just over a year, the Wall Street Journal reports, AT&T may be reconsidering whether, as it expands its broadband services nationwide this year, it needs or even wants the Yahoo name tagging along for the ride.
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AT&T will participate in the FCC's wireless auction, but hasn't decided whether to bid for the open-access 700 MHz band.
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By Richard Locker locker@commercialappealcom  NASHVILLE - AT&T's costly yearlong effort to win approval of a bill in the state legislature to streamline its entry into Tennessee's cable television market is dead for the year.  Legislative sponsors of the bill, Reps.
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The boards of directors of SBC  Communications Inc. SBC.N and AT&T Corp. T.N were to meet  on Sunday to vote on a more than $15 billion stock deal in  which SBC will buy AT&T, according to sources familiar with the  situation.