In 1974 the US Justice Department initiated a historic
lawsuit against what was then commonly known as "The Phone Company." Eight years later AT&T was forced to divest itself of local phone businesses which were transformed into 7 regional "Baby Bells." AT&T then focused on long distance services with two new competitors: Sprint and MCI. Today that trend is on the way to reversing itself.
Recent and pending phone industry mergers are threatening to hurt consumers and bring us back to the monopolistic pre-1974 days (see diary below). In addition, the phone companies are allowing the Bush administration to spy on Americans and we've seen them team up to claim such efforts are beyond judicial control. Finally big corporations and the phone companies are trying to grab corporate control of the Internet by eliminating Net Neutrality and making it into the modern day equivalent of television.
This raises serious questions about the quid pro quo between government and coporations concerning wiretapping, phone company mergers, and net neutrality.
The Benton Foundation reports:JUDGE PLANS TO REVIEW AT&T, VERIZON DEALS
The Bush administration's approval of the megamergers of AT&T and SBC Communications and of Verizon Communications and MCI was challenged Wednesday by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said at the start of the hearing that he may not have enough information to permit the mergers to remain intact without major modifications. Judge Sullivan told attorneys for the telecommunications companies and the U.S. Justice Department, which was defending the two deals, that he has "doubts" the mergers would boost competition. "The public indeed has to have some confidence in these proceedings," Judge Sullivan said.
Are phone companies trying to put the squeeze on local internet providers? Santa Cruz, California based Cruzio notes:
One item being reviewed may particularly interest Cruzio members: as part of the mergers, the telephone companies were required to offer what's known as "dry DSL" or "naked DSL" -- DSL without telephone service.
The telcos have recently made it available, but are charging as much for dry DSL as they do for DSL and telephone service together. They aren't wholesaling it to ISPs like Cruzio, AOL or Earthlink at all.
Cruzio had looked forward to providing people with dry DSL, so that members could drop their land-line phone service if they chose but still maintain a DSL Internet connection. We are disappointed by this name-only implementation of an already toothless agreement. There has been little or no effort to enforce even this most minimal of conditions for the merger. Judge Sullivan's action offers a glimmer of hope.
Two serious questions still need to be answered:
- Are these mergers being approved by the Bush Administration in a quid pro quo arrangement for cooperation in the wiretapping game?
- Are the phone companies cooperating with the administrations wiretapping requests to curry favor in it's efforts to eliminate net neutrality?
The administration is not asking these questions: the Justice Dept. is working to eliminate the courts from having a say (although some suits are proceeding). The Republicans controlled congress is seeking to change the laws after the fact so that Bush broke no laws with wiretapping. (How the hell is that legal?)
That seems to leave the only chance as a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of congress, so that some sort of meaningful investigations into these matters can begin.