ISP's In Uproar Over Verizon-MCI Merger

Tue Aug 23 21:24:29 UTC 2005

I think that big carriers have successfully convinced regulators that
the telecom deregulation in late nineties was bad for the industry. It
certainly destroyed quite a few big companies, e.g. MCI and AT&T. Also
it dragged down a few big companies, e.g. Verizon has $40B debt. In
the meantime, US is trailing other industrial countries in broadband
penetration because no carrier is interested in investing and building
an infrastructure to be shared by their competitors. The only way they
argue to get the industry out is to have a few large companies with
little competition.

True or not, FCC is listening to them.

On 8/23/05, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) <fergdawg at netzero.net> wrote:
> 
> Dan Neel writes in CRN.com:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> The California ISP Association (CISPA) claims the merger of Verizon Communications and MCI will threaten ISP business models.
> 
> CISPA represents more than 180 ISPs. Mike Jackman, executive director of the Sacramento, Calif.-based organization, said the multibillion-dollar Verizon-MCI merger, announced in February, will run many pure-play ISPs out of business or force them to diversify their offerings--possibly into more value-added services that could compete with those provided by VARs and system integrators.
> 
> Verizon and MCI expect to close their merger by the end of the year. Another blockbuster telecommunications merger--between SBC Communications and AT&T--also is slated to close by the end of this year or in early 2006.
> 
> Spurring the CISPA complaint is an Aug. 5 Federal Communications Commission decision to reclassify DSL service as an information service instead of a telecom service, which Jackman said frees phone companies like Verizon from regulations requiring them to share bandwidth with ISPs. The FCC has placed a one-year grace period on enforcement of the change, he added.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml;jsessionid=P4TBQHJM0MMKYQSNDBESKHA?articleId=169600170
> 
> Sorry for the long URL.
> 
> - ferg
> 
> --
> "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
>  Engineering Architecture for the Internet
>  fergdawg at netzero.net or fergdawg at sbcglobal.net
>  ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
> 
>