Trade Law Daily is a service of Warren Communications News.

SBC and Verizon have made millions of dollars of payments to the ...

SBC and Verizon have made millions of dollars of payments to the U.S. Treasury the past 4 years for not meeting performance conditions, according to notices issued by the FCC last week. The agency said SBC made $87.8 million…

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.

in payments since Dec. 2000 for not meeting conditions of the FCC’s approval of the SBC-Ameritech merger. Verizon’s total was reported as $17.3 million since Aug. 2001 for not meeting conditions on the GTE-Bell Atlantic merger. The payments are made when SBC or Verizon miss targets for providing rivals with access to their networks -- for example, missing installation deadlines. The payments are triggered whenever the companies are behind in meeting a particular standard 3 consecutive months or 6 months in a calendar year. Both carriers have been making payments every month since their conditions went into effect -- Dec. 2000 for SBC, Aug. 2001 for Verizon. SBC’s payments, which amounted to more than $6 million in each of the first 3 months, have dropped measurably, to $38,700 in Feb., and have remained in the 5 digits since. Verizon paid more than $1.5 million each of the first 2 months but the payments have been below $1 million since. The company paid $309,126 in May, the last month reported. SBC has complained about the large number of performance measurements it must meet each month, while Verizon has complained that the payment calculation used by the agency isn’t consistent with the methodology outlined in its merger order. The FCC made its latest reports June 3 in CC Doc. 98-141 for SBC, 98-184 for Verizon.