With Katrina and all the other hurricanes hitting Bell south's area, they are just overwhelmed. The prize here is Cingular anyway; the landline business is declining. Since neither SBC nor Bell South have too much interest in FiOS, the harm the consumers near term is minimal. In fact, some of the hurricane-ravaged areas may see upgrades and repairs sooner rather than later. The impact will be felt near term and longer term most by small and mid-sized businesses, especially those run out of the home. Most of the expense of NxT1/T3 (typical speeds needed by small and mid-sized businesses lines are eaten up by the atrocious local-loop charges, which will most likely rise as a result of this deal. Getting Ethernet and/or Fiber to the premises will be a long way away in the areas served by these two companies. Yes there is cable and DSL, but for now these are not as reliable as the dedicated lines that a NxT1 or a T3 would bring. Add the that the need for some to multi-home and the costs continue to rise. This is where the FCC, in the role of regulator, would do the most good. But as someone mentioned in a previous post the FCC is feckless at this point. Bigger is not necessarily better or worse, but when government abdicates its role as the regulator of free markets, it is most definitely worse. Edward Ray

...

What are people worried about here exactly?

The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we had in the 1980s?

Granted, it won't ever be quite *that* bad again, but we're slowly moving back towards one monolithic ILEC, and that does worry me.

To worry most is the fact that a single company has all services on a given area: fixed, wireless, long-distance. I don't think that having a single fixed-only company throughout the country would be such a big issue... but having the customer first mile (which some people call last mile, although saying customer comes first) and be allowed to offer LD and wireless is something to be afraid. Be very afraid. Rubens

On Mar 5, 2006, at 8:05 PM, Eric A. Hall wrote:

On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:

...

Eric A. Hall wrote:

...

What are people worried about here exactly?

The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we had in the 1980s?

Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern is consolidation then we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from merging back in 1997, since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular, which is mostly indistinguishable from the earlier one.

Sort of. No offense to Qwest folk, but we're basically down to a duopoly, which really isn't that improved over a single corporation. It will be interesting to see just how much the bells will compete with each other. Traditionally they haven't. They would have enjoyed large regulatory freedoms had they left their own territory and gone into each others territories, but they generally didn't. Insert your favorite excuse/fig leaf for why they haven't in the past one or two decades (depending on which regulatory construct you favor). If going forward, VZ & ATT do not engage each other, instead of aggressively competing on each others home turf (outside of wireless which), maybe we'll benefit as 3rd parties. Maybe the DOJ will take notice. If not, then you end up with two organizations controlling their respective markets and we all lose. Two because it seems nobody really takes Qwest seriously out of the big three, or now soon to be two. That being said, the 'new ATT' with all those assets will need to be integrated, and work efficiently. Turf battles will ensue. Tens of thousands will get laid off. This really has a good ways to go before things settle out. If Atlanta turns into ATT's version of BellSouth's Birmingham, Atlanta isn't going to be a very fun place to be for that crowd. Which will have ramifications at a much larger scale, far outside telecom. And, yes, we perhaps should've blocked the NYNEX/BA merger in 1997. I think the underlying problem here is with the entire telecom industry caught up in merger mania for the past decade or so, nobody had a clear idea of what they wanted to see when it was all done. Or just how far done was. So, this is much like the pot on the stove, where we as the public/regulators/etc are the frog in the cold water (blissful early 80's) and we can't quite make out when it's time to jump out.

I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T ghost really, since there's none of it left.

I don't know if I share that view entirely, knowing how much the AT&T brand identity is revered inside (especially inside the baby boomer generation). Think of the scene from Toy Story "ooooh, the claaaaw". That gets sort of close to some of my experiences. Whether they can convert I think definitely will be a challenge. We really can't do much more than sit and watch as individuals, and as companies we have to step up our game. If nothing else, this should dump a good number of good people into the now available talent pool, too. But, again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the integration nightmares these companies will have will open opportunities for smaller, more nimble players. Ultimately, I think Qwest will just wither away and the assets will be sold off in bidding war, post bankruptcy protection. Or maybe it'll be maintained as the fig leaf. Who knows. I'm not sure it matters. In this game, they're the size of Alltel compared with individual RBOCs, and not really much of a factor. Then again, this deal isn't done, VZ might counter bid, divestitures may be required, and regulatory review needs to be conducted, and a number of lawsuits dealt with. So, it'll be a while. But, ah, what a great way to start the morning. ;-) Best regards, Christian

Thus spake "Justin M. Streiner" <streiner@cluebyfour.org>

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Christian Kuhtz wrote:

...

That being said, the 'new ATT' with all those assets will need to be integrated, and work efficiently. Turf battles will ensue. Tens of

Integration, going on past experience, is highly unlikely. ... It's the same phenomenon of having 37 different numbers to call to get anything done at $RBOC, none of which are connected to each other. If their phone tree is that disorganized, I have little reason to suspect the underlying support systems are any different, nor will they be under the SB^H^H^HNew AT&T.

I was helping $RBOC roll out a new service, and their project schedule had six months allocated to determining which billing system (out of a dozen or so) would be used and and another six months to determine what the pricing model would be. It's now a year later, and last I heard they still haven't figured out either one. But the technology works great... Integration? How are they going to do that when the first thing management does is lay off all the people who understand how all the systems work? It's all the peons can do to keep the mess running; there's nobody left to integrate anything and get the "synergistic cost savings" that management touts when they propose mergers. S Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin