Regulation, Please

We are seeing a lot of merger activity at the ILEC level. When are we going to see some regulation?

Many states already have deregulated much of the telecom services from Internet to fiber to value-adds, but some, including SC and Florida, are unregulating local phone service. And the FCC (News - Alert) has given up oversight on much of the telecom landscape as well. My beef is that they keep approving these mergers that do not benefit consumers. Maybe Windtream buying CTC and D&E Communications makes sense. We’ll see how the CenturyTel-Embarq (News - Alert) merger affects consumers, businesses and Agents. My guess: Not positively.

The Fairpoint-VZ deal left consumers holding the bag. Broadband? Maybe with extra stimulus money. Agents? Sorry. We don’t need no stinking agents. AT&T-Centennial and VZW-Alltel mergers followed by spectrum, subscriber and asset swaps is daunting to the average consumer. The FTC (News - Alert) and Justice Dept. approve these mergers to create “companies too big to fail”. When will we learn?

It’s not the FCC or the State Utility Commissions’ job to look out for the Indirect Channel, but these mergers cause havoc. Integration in telecom is a herculean task. A task that most CEO’s don’t think about or apparently care about as they strictly look at cost-cutting, synergies, stock price and bonuses. America needs a vibrant and flexible communications network. It does not have that. AT&T still acts like separate companies with different systems and no integration. It makes upgrading services, especially fiber and Metro Ethernet, time-consuming. While the customer waits months for service, his network is log jammed.

Verizon (News - Alert) continues to dump landlines, making a deal today with Frontier to take over 13 states, in an all-stock spin-off move. Verizon will win, but the customers will not be seeing FTTH any time soon. The Broadband Stimulus money has to go to non-ILEC’s. PCO, independent ISPs, WISPs and CLECs will be more likely to actually deliver broadband to places outside the top 75 MSAs. These service providers are shovel-ready to build, hang, or light the way to put customers on broadband as soon as possible. American economic future lies with small businesses not Big Business. IT

Peter Radizeski is head of RAD-INFO (News - Alert), Inc., a consulting agency specializing in the telecom industry.

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