shouting loudly

FCC OKs AT&T/BellSouth merger; Deal includes 30 months of net neutrality

After months in front of a deadlocked FCC, AT&T has a green light to swallow BellSouth (pdf). The new company will control “more than half the telephone and Internet access lines in the U.S.”

The merger likely would have sailed through on the strength of the FCC’s 3-2 Republican majority, but the newest Republican commissioner, Robert McDowell, recused himself from the decision upon his appointment in June. Commissioner McDowell recently worked as a lobbyist for companies opposed to the merger and has remained on the sidelines to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To make the merger more palatable to the likes of Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, the Commission’s Democratic members, AT&T finally proposed several voluntary conditions on the merger. As CNet explains:

The conditions of the merger proposed by AT&T and agreed to by the FCC included the sale of certain wireless airwaves in the 2.5 gigahertz band, a special $19.95 per month price tag for stand-alone basic high-speed Internet service and a promise for the next two years to adhere to specific Network neutrality rules. …

Specifically, it agreed “not to provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers, including those affiliated with AT&T/BellSouth, any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth’s wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination.”

On PublicKnowledge.org, Herald Feld calls the conditions a “huge victory” for network neutrality; all the same, the NN debate is far from over. These merger conditions are only temporary and will not apply to other companies, so network neutrality proponents will still be calling for legislation in 2007.