AT&T had discussions into Christmas weekend with top advisers to ...
AT&T had discussions into Christmas weekend with top advisers to Comrs. Copps and Adelstein, and with FCC Chief of Staff Dan Gonzalez and Tom Navin, chief of the Wireline Bureau, about the company’s merger with BellSouth, the company said…
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in an ex parte letter filed at the Commission. AT&T said the topics included “special access related conditions, the net neutrality related conditions, the wireless issues, issues surrounding the length of any potential conditions and concerns regarding the Tunney Act.” With several crucial aides off for the week, little progress is expected on the merger until the new year, sources said. CompTel and Time Warner, meanwhile, reported on meetings at the Commission in which they raised a red flag about what they call anticompetitive effects of bundled discounts in AT&T’s special access contract tariffs. “The merger between AT&T and BellSouth will eliminate all existing and all potential wholesale metro transmission competition between the two largest wireline competitors in the BellSouth region,” CompTel and Time Warner said: “The elimination of this competition will result in both a near-term accretion in market power and a foreclosure of future competition in the market for wholesale metro transmission services.”