Commissioner won't break deadlock over AT&T-BellSouth deal
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FCC member who formerly lobbied on behalf of Bell competitors says he will not vote on the merger because of ethics considerations.
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The anticipated price war between cable and telecommunications companies over the price of Internet access has failed to materialize.
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InfoWorld - AT&T 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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Antitrust regulators could prevent halt Delta's merger talkes with UAL and Northwest
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Meta Group senior analyst David Willis said that he doesn&#39;t expect the Baby Bells to bow down just yet. &quot;I don&#39;t think VoIP is going to remain entirely unregulated over the next several years,&quot; Willis said.
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After a congressional report last month criticized the FCC and private industry for not working better together to ensure a smoother DTV transition, one commissioner responded by saying the executive branch should get involved.
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AT&T Inc. is still evaluating whether to examine traffic on its Internet lines to stop illegal sharing of copyright material, its chief executive said Wednesday.
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US prosecutors said Thursday Qwest Communications isn&#39;t off the hook, even though the company agreed to a $250 million civil fine for its addiction to fraudulent accounting.
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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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Robert M. McDowell will be permitted to cast the tie-breaking vote on the proposed acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T.
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By Harry R. Weber  ATLANTA - When AT&T Inc. announced its blockbuster deal to acquire BellSouth Corp. in March, the companies said it would take a year to close. Since then, they moved up the date twice, amid expectations it would get pushed through without much trouble.
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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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U.S. communications regulators gave  AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc the go-ahead on Friday  to more closely combine their local and long-distance  businesses without being subject to additional regulations.
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InfoWorld - The U.S. Congress still needs to deal with network neutrality, and supporters in Congress are willing to block any legislation favored by broadband providers until the issue is resolved, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday.
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The head of the U.S. Federal  Communications Commission flatly refused on Thursday to delay a  vote next week on a plan to ease U.S. media ownership rules  despite a barrage of criticism from Senate lawmakers.
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The Federal Communications Commission is slated to approve the $67 billion purchase of BellSouth by telecom giant AT&T, formerly known as SBC. Shareholders approved the merger in July and expected government regulators to demand the combined company shed some assets.
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Despite a recent court victory for the area&#39;s largest telecommunications company, the battle for your home phone service isn&#39;t about to end.