October 06, 2006
FCC Confirms AT&T-BellSouth Merger Vote but No Guarantees

By Robert Liu
TMCnet Executive Editor

The Federal Communications Commission has confirmed that it will consider the $67-billion, mega-merger of AT&T and BellSouth at its regularly scheduled meeting next week on October 12, as expected. But there’s no guarantee that FCC (News - Alert) Chairman Kevin Martin has the necessary votes to push the deal through without imposing special conditions, leaving open the possibility that action may be delayed, one analyst noted.
 
According to the agenda for the October 12 meeting released last night, FCC commissioners are expected to discuss the transfer of control of BellSouth (News - Alert) to AT&T (News - Alert), which includes the assets of the Cingular (News - Alert) Wireless joint venture. Chairman Kevin Martin has said in congressional testimony that he has informally set a 180-day window to evaluate the deal, which was announced on March 5.
 
“We caution, however, that it is not uncommon for agenda items, particularly controversial ones, to be pulled at the last minute, for a later vote. It's even possible for the meeting itself to be moved back,” said Blair Levin, analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.
 
At issue is whether or not the FCC’s newest commissioner, Robert McDowell, will participate in the vote. While McDowell is a fellow Republican like Martin, he was also a lobbyist at COMPTEL (News - Alert), a trade group representing CLECs that in June filed a petition to block the deal.
 
According to the Wall Street Journal, McDowell may excuse himself from the vote due to the conflict of interest. If that were the case, then Martin would need to reach a consensus with the two Democrat commissioners, who are pushing for conditions like those imposed when AT&T and SBC merged.
 
In addition to the FCC, the Justice Department needs to sign off on the deal.
 
“We nevertheless believe that the process is in its final weeks, not months, and while it's possible there might be some FCC slippage beyond Oct. 12, the issues are well enough known for the commissioners to address the merger sometime soon,” Levin added.
 
The AT&T-BellSouth merger is all about IP Multimedia Subsystems. To find out more about IMS and how it represents the lifeblood for service providers today, be sure to visit the IMS Expo -- a must-attend event, collocated at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006, in San Diego.
 
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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.