FCC Commissioner Copps Speaks Out Against SBC and Verizon Mergers

The FCC recently approved the mergers of SBC Communications Inc. + AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. + MCI Inc. These mergers mean that now, the two largest telcos will own not just the last mile pipes (the copper from your home to the telco’s central office), but significant chunks of Internet backbone as well. This will probably be a very bad thing for most, if not all, consumers and businesses in this country. But I think the best summation is from FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who wrote in his opinion:

“If you seek the reason why we haven’t arrived at that happy valley of competition rife with consumer benefits, you can start with the misdirected policies of the FCC over the last several years. On too many fronts, the Commission put the spear to the pro-competitive policies of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It put intra-modal competition for the residential market pretty much beyond reach for new entrant carriers and then proceeded to inhibit enterprise competition, too. We turned our eyes away when enforcement was needed to keep bottleneck facilities open. And all the while we kept singing confidently “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”—inter-modal competition is going to save us with all its new options. Maybe, but then again maybe not—we’re still waiting. I think we ought to be concerned. Thanks in part to our actions, the wireline market became increasingly the province of the few. More than half of the wireless market came under the control of incumbent wireline providers. New services like VoIP have been held back by the high cost of broadband in this country. And now the Internet backbone seems headed in the same direction of control by a favored few.”

The question now is: What are we going to do to ensure that these super-telcos serve the public good?