Qwest protests SBC-AT&T merger as harmful to competition

Tue Apr 26 09:02:08 UTC 2005

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005, Justin M. Streiner wrote:

> If Qwest would have won the bid, then it would be up to Verizon to cry foul - 
> and rest assured they would.  Funny how that works :-)

We may yet see that happening as it appears the bidding war is far from 
over - latest news article on this issue (also reporting on Qwest being 
upset over SBC+ATT deal) says that Qwest increased its bid and now MCI 
says Qwest bid is superior...:

http://news.com.com/Qwest+to+turn+up+heat+on+SBC-AT38T+merger+fight/2100-1036_3-5683932.html

Oh and BTW, you wanna know who likes this kind of a deal?
Well - apparently its the Union!:
  http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=72768

And you know what their reason is? It seems they care a lot about 
national security, in fact here is how they see it:

"The merger makes certain that national security will be safeguarded, by
  ensuring that AT&T, on which the government heavily depends for national
  security and other needs, will be a strong American company,"

>> Both mergers stink to high heaven. And we can probably rest assured that 
>> the FCC does not have the consumers' best interest in mind.
>
> They haven't for quite a long time.

Wanna know how and why that happened? Let me explain to you on related 
example. Lets take "Inter-American  Telecommunication Commission" which up 
until now was made up of people who were interested in best technology 
and how it can best meet consumer demands and interests. But not any more:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053595,00.html
  "The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a
   year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but
   important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum
   regulations. But for this week's meeting in Guatemala City, politics
   has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S.
   delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped
   by the White House because they supported John Kerry's 2004 campaign."

Apparently politics is in and consumer interests are out, especially for 
current administration who knows how to separate those who gave them money 
from those who did not (in fact this administration's actions will easily 
dispel any myths that if Europe is full of corruption and its full of 
liberals, then its the liberal politicians who are most easily corrupted).

So aint it great when your vote counts like that? Well, it might even 
have been better if it counted as much as the $$$ given to the right 
politicians.... So now guess, who has money to give to the right place, 
big company like SBC who's contribution you can easily see and remember 
or number of individuals with diverse reasons and backgrounds. And then
of course we have FCC appointed by politicians, but tasked with having
to decide in best interests of those individuals, or is it?

And coming to parallel topic of discussions, we now have calls (by guess 
who...) for having IP registrations (and ICANN in general) be taken over 
by ITU, so that process can be controlled and administered by government.
So apparently current system where ip registrations and policies are 
controlled primarily by the consumers of those resources through the 
non-profit organizations is not quite what the governments of the world 
like - no, its large monopoly telcos that they prefer!

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net