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Daniel Berninger
Shortchanged
By Scott Woolley
The Baby Bells may have bilked consumers out of billions by inflating the cost of their networks. Regulators seem content to overlook the matter.
Front-page headlines in June 2000 hailed a historic deal that dramatically cut phone rates for the nation's consumers. The Federal Communications Commission, in persuading the Baby Bells to slash the access fees they charge long-distance carriers for routing calls to their local lines, said it would save customers $3.2 billion a year. The FCC's claim to have enacted "the largest rate cut in the history of federal telephone regulation" was the New York Times' lead story.
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Supreme Court to Review Antitrust Ruling
By Josh Long
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will review an appeals court ruling that found competitive phone companies and consumers have the right to sue the heavily regulated regional Bell operating companies based on antitrust legislation.
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As Web expands, some say bell is tolling for Bells
Voice network called obsolete
By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
As SBC Communications Inc. confronts mounting troubles-- deserting customers, falling revenues and rising layoffs--its executives insist that things will improve if the government relaxes regulation and the economy recovers.
But that may be ignoring the real culprit: Today's technology has rendered the century-old voice network of the Bell companies obsolete.
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Consumer group asks SEC for Verizon Probe
By Josh Long
A watchdog group has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate some accounting practices of Verizon Communications Inc., citing FCC audits in the 1990s that found the regional Bell operating companies misrepresented more than $5 billion in book costs.
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UNE-P: Opportunity or Bust for IP Voice?
After the Wall Street Journal article based on an exclusive interview given by FCC chair Michael K. Powell to the financial publication, telecom circles were abuzz with speculation that the Federal Communications Commission was about to lower the boom on competitive telephony by repealing the UNE-P rules.
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Consumer group asks SEC to investigate Verizon's accounting
Brian Bergstein
A telecommunications watchdog group Wednesday asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the accounting of Verizon Communications Inc., saying the nation's largest phone company has not resolved questions about how it determines the costs of its infrastructure.
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Additional papers picking up the AP story listed here.
RBOC Accounting Mystery Resurfaces
Just as all the ruckus around the 2002 carrier accounting scandals had started to die down, a ghost from Christmas past has shown up, claiming that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) helped hide fraudulent accounting by regional Bells when it prematurely closed an audit of the companies in 2000.
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Dow Jones Business News
Dow Jones Newswires
Or, at least, no regulatory hassles yet.
Discussions regarding the impact of so-called Internet telephony on the conventional regulated wireline telephone system have been growing louder among regulators and competitors in recent weeks. Ideas for new rules affecting the fledgling industry are circulating even as it struggles to gain a foothold in the market.
"It's still a baby," says Daniel Berninger, managing director of Pulver.com, an incubator for the budding industry.
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REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Son of Frankentobacco
As if the telecom market meltdown isn't bad enough, the industry now bids to give us a legal shakedown too. It comes in the form of a new strategy marrying two of the most debilitating parts of U.S. law: antitrust and mass tort claims.
This effort has just received a tremendous boost from two federal appeals-court rulings reinstating dubious antitrust lawsuits against both Verizon and BellSouth. If the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission don't wake up fast, the few healthy companies left in telecom will be served up to the plaintiffs' bar like fresh-roasted turkey.
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COURT REOPENS DOOR FOR ANTITRUST SUITS AGAINST BELLS
by Ed Gubbins
A string of upset defeats in court have left the RBOCs more vulnerable to antitrust litigation and opened the door for future litigants to take a shot at the tripled damages awarded to victims of anticompetitive behavior.
Until recently, CLEC antitrust suits against Bell companies have been widely dismissed by district courts on the basis of a precedent set by Goldwasser vs. Ameritech. In that case, a 7th Circuit court ruled that Bell/CLEC disputes arising from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should be resolved through the provisions and penalties in the act, not antitrust law.
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Bells’ Antitrust Argument May Be Losing Ground
Recent court rulings indicate that the Goldwasser argument which the Bells have been using to address antitrust complaints filed against them -- may be losing steam.
Goldwasser v. Ameritech is a consumer class action suit started in 1997. In Goldwasser, the court found the Bells are not subject to antitrust claims with regard to service they provide to competitors. Instead, such claims of anticompetitive behavior fall under jurisdiction of the FCC, which promulgated the regulations imposed under the Telecom Act that govern competitors’ access to the Bells. In effect, this means the Telecom Act “trumps” the Sherman Antitrust Act, says Dan Berninger, managing director at Pulver.com
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Courts Coming Through for CLECs
As conventional wisdom has it, the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) are ready to close the noose around the competitive local exchange carriers' necks.
But wait, not so fast. Recent court victories for the CLECs point to them gaining renewed life in the battle for broadband access over RBOC lines.
Last week Covad Communications Inc. (OTC: COVD - message board) and CoreComm won preliminary motions in federal court that will allow them to continue antitrust cases against Baby Bells. Decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta and the U.S. District Court in Cleveland both went in favor of the CLECs.
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Verizon battles antitrust suits
Jeremy Feiler Staff Writer
If the telecommunications industry were a high school, Verizon Communications would be a popular, good-looking athlete who gets good grades from its teachers.
But some of its schoolmates -- most often competitive local exchange carriers, or CLECs -- would characterize Verizon as the school bully who smiles at the teachers while he breaks the rules; a bully with a quick sucker punch and a deep pocket for lunch money.
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Baby Bells May Be Subject to Consumer Antitrust Suits (Update4)
New York, June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Verizon Communications Inc.'s Bell Atlantic unit and other Baby Bell local-telephone companies may be subject to federal antitrust suits by consumers complaining of inferior service, a U.S. appeals court ruled.
The decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opens the Baby Bells to lawsuits by retail customers who may collect triple damages if they succeed. Until now, only competitors were allowed to bring antitrust claims over poor service against companies like Verizon, the biggest U.S. local-phone provider. Some legal experts say the appeals court decision bolsters the claims of Baby Bell competitors.
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ANTITRUST FUNDS
Ed Gubbins
Jeff Elkins calls it his "smoking gun." Legally, he's not allowed to talk about it in detail. All he can say is that his lawyers found it buried in a cramped 5-by-10-foot room in a Pacific Bell facility with no windows and no ventilation.
It was the spring of 2000, near the deadline for gathering evidence in the antitrust suit Elkins had filed against Pacific Bell on behalf of his company, DSL provider CalTech International. CalTech's lawyers dug through 32 dusty boxes full of Pac Bell company records that day. What they eventually found, stuck between two sheets in those towers of paper, was a document so incriminating it ultimately won the case for CalTech.
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Appeals Court Reverses Decision Blocking Antitrust Suit
By Josh Long
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a decision Thursday that blocked an antitrust suit against Verizon Communications Inc. in a case experts say could encourage widespread antitrust litigation against the regional Bell operating companies.
During the past few years, judges throughout the country have been tossing out antitrust suits filed against the Bells. In these cases, the judges refer to an appeals court ruling that found plaintiffs could not litigate an antitrust case if the complaints were related to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, antitrust experts say. The Bells have cited the Seventh Circuit opinion in Goldwasser vs. Ameritech in a successful bid to get the cases thrown out of court, sources say.
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Pulver: Bell Pushes Tauzin-Dingell
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- pulver.com analysis of voting data compiled by the New Networks Institute and campaign contribution data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that votes in favor of HR1542 the Tauzin-Dingell Bill corresponded to campaign contributions 98% of the time.
The bill championed by Chairman of House Commerce Committee "Billy" Tauzin passed the House of Representatives 237 to157 on February 27, 2002. The Bell companies were the dominant source of campaign contributions for all but 5 of the 237 legislators that voted in favor of the bill.
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BELLS COULD FACE NEW ANTITRUST CHALLENGE
By Kim Sunderland
The remaining CLECs still are fighting for their lives -- and now for the end of the lives of the Bells.
Competitors claim the Bells are too big and powerful and collectively are out to crush the CLECs' businesses. What's new is these competitors are pushing for dissolution of the Bells as we know them through antitrust actions. And they've been getting a big booster through separate involvement by some states attorneys general.
Several attorneys general attended in January the first networking meeting in Washington including representatives from the five companies with active antitrust complaints, all of which aim to reprise the antitrust battles that led to the breakup of AT&T Corp. The five are CoreComm, Covad Communications Co., Cavalier Telephone, NowCommunications and Ntegrity Telecontent Services Inc.
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The CLEC antitrust groundswell
By: Dan Sweeney
The CLEC antitrust groundswell
Pulver.com, an analyst and consulting firm specializing in IP telephony, has recently established a forum for the pursuit of comprehensive antitrust suits against the RBOCs.
The past association of Jeff Pulver with rather abortive lobbying efforts on behalf of the stillborn IP telephony industry might give us pause, but a glance at the participants in the latest meeting organized by the firm on Jan. 23 seems to indicate that we should take this effort seriously.
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http://www.pulver.com/antitrustreport/webarchive/TotalTelecom01.htm
(text only) TotalTelecom, January 25, 2002
Business & Regulatory
Antitrust movement mobilising to squash U.S. RBOCs
By Elizabeth Biddlecombe , Total Telecom
Wednesday saw the first meeting of a group of U.S. industry representatives that are looking to open antitrust proceedings against the country's four incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs).
The meeting, attended by competitive service providers such as Covad, Allegiance Telecom and Ntegrity, representatives from bodies such as the Consumer Union and the American ISP Association, and from state antitrust offices around the country.
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Alcatel offers a smarter DSL box
By Mark Leon
IN A MOVE designed to please large carrier customers, Alcatel in Paris has introduced a new version of its DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer) with new IP functions and management features.
The 7300 ASAM (Advanced Services Access Manager) supports IP multicasting, technology that could make it easier for providers to offer streaming media content such as video to their DSL customers.
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Court Smiles on Cable Broadband
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling today effectively turns over regulation of broadband cable access to the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to continue regulating the prices that cable companies pay for gaining access to businesses and homes over utility lines.
The decision was widely considered a victory for cable operators, which are aggressively challenging local phone companies for dominance of the Internet broadband market. The fact that the FCC can regulate the price utilities can charge for access may help keep costs low and ensure the rights of access for the cable companies.
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Chicago Tribune, February 16, 2003
New Telephony, February 13, 2003
Associated Press, February 12, 2003
AP Business Writer
Dow Jones Newswires, November 25, 2002
Unregulated Internet Telephony Tries to Stay Unfettered
Monday November 25, 3:34 pm ET
By Mark Wigfield
WASHINGTON -- A confidential internal memo circulated at SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC - News) last year touted Internet-based telephone service as a cheap way for the company to enter new markets without regulatory hassle.
Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2002
Telephony Magazine, August 12, 2002
X-Change Magazine, August 6, 2002
Philadelphia Business Journal, July 12, 2002
Telephony Magazine, June 17, 2002
X-Change Magazine, June 6, 2002
X-Change Magazine, March 3, 2002
Americas Network, February 1, 2002
(subscription required) TotalTelecom, January 25, 2002
Light Reading, January 16, 2002
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