FCC Okays AT&T's Merger, NN Part of Deal
Dec 31, 2006
On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 (following Commissioner McDowell recusing himself) to approve AT&T's $85.8 billion acquisition of BellSouth, the largest telecom deal to date. The vote came after AT&T agreed to a series of conditions that reassured Democratic commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, including a provision that would honor certain network neutrality principles for the next two years.
Reaction to the net neutrality issue has been mixed. While a number of net neutrality supporters view the agreement as a victory (e.g. Public Knowledge's blog post), the two Republican commissioners - Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate - issued a joint statement that said, "today's order does not mean that the Commission has adopted an additional net neutrality principle. We continue to believe such a requirement is not necessary and may impede infrastructure deployment."
You can read more from News.com in this article. Wall Street Journal online subscribers can also read about the deal here.
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