The Federal Communications Commission has pushed back today’s vote on the $67-billion, mega-merger of AT&T and BellSouth until its open meeting scheduled for November 3 amid an impasse between Republican and Democratic Commissioners, according to a letter sent out on Friday by FCC (News - Alert) Chairman Kevin Martin.

 

In the letter sent to the two Democratic Commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, Chairman Martin characterized their recent dialogue as “constructive” but also warned them to move on a timely basis.

 

“I share your desire to proceed on an expedited basis. To this end, to the extent that you have additional concern, I trust that you will extend us the courtesy of raising them as soon as possible to avoid further delay in our consideration of this transaction,” he wrote.

 

While the deal’s approval (which isn’t being questioned) may still occur sooner than the November timeframe, AT&T (News - Alert) and BellSouth (News - Alert) officials will at the very least have to wait 10 days, which Chairman Martin outlined as an additional public comment period.

 

Martin’s response comes following a separate letter sent on Friday by Copps and Adelstein that voiced their concern about approving the deal prior to a Federal court review of the AT&T-SBC and Verizon (News - Alert)-MCI deals being conducted under the Tunney Act. That outcome is still pending. Those same concerns were also raised at the end of last month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R. Wis.) and Rep. John Conyers (D. Mich.).

 

According to the Democratic Commissioners, the number of new proposals raising concerns about the transaction increased over the last 48 hours, following the deal’s approval by the Department of Justice – an action that many industry observers saw as a “rubber stamp.”

 

“Such an approach is even more important because the Department of Justice approved this combination with little substantive analysis and only the day before we were scheduled to vote, making our task much harder,” Copps and Adelstein wrote in their letter.

 

Republicans do outnumber Democrats at the FCC; however, complicating matters was the abstention of the agency’s newest commissioner, Robert McDowell, due to a conflict of interest. McDowell previously worked at COMPTEL (News - Alert), the lobbying firm that is spearheading the review of the previous RBOC mergers under the Tunney Act.

 

“Because Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell has not been participating in the AT&T-BellSouth review, we do not believe that Chairman Martin has much choice but to put off today's planned FCC vote, though as of publication, we haven't yet seen an official notice yet. Without Mr. McDowell's vote, the Commission appears to be split 2-2 along party lines for now,” said Blair Levin, analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.

 

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.