Welcome back, Ma Bell

This is from Dave Farber's list ..

> Subject: Everything old is new again
> From: Kevin G. Barkes
>
> NEWS ALERT
> from The Wall Street Journal
>
> AT&T is planning to acquire BellSouth for roughly
$65 billion. A
> deal between the two could be announced as early as
Monday.

I somehow wonder if the old executives at Ma Bell had
already worked
out a timeline for resurrecting her well before she was
split up ..

--srs
--
Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.listsgmail.com)

On 3/5/2006 9:18 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

> I somehow wonder if the old executives at Ma Bell had
already worked
> out a timeline for resurrecting her well before she was
split up ..

That would include divestiture of residential LD, equipment
sales, bell
labs, etc? Really, there's just not much of the old Ma Bell
left in AT&T,
and the few parts that are left don't constitute anything
like the
national monopoly that was broken up.

What are people worried about here exactly?

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.o
reilly.com/catalog/coreprot/

 
With Katrina and all the other hurricanes hitting Bell
south's area, they
are just overwhelmed.  The prize here is Cingular anyway;
the landline
business is declining.  Since neither SBC nor Bell South
have too much
interest in FiOS, the harm the consumers near term is
minimal.  In fact,
some of the hurricane-ravaged areas may see upgrades and
repairs sooner
rather than later.

The impact will be felt near term and longer term most by
small and
mid-sized businesses, especially those run out of the home. 
Most of the
expense of NxT1/T3 (typical speeds needed by small and
mid-sized businesses
lines are eaten up by the atrocious local-loop charges,
which will most
likely rise as a result of this deal.  Getting Ethernet
and/or Fiber to the
premises will be a long way away in the areas served by
these two companies.
Yes there is cable and DSL, but for now these are not as
reliable as the
dedicated lines that a NxT1 or a T3 would bring.  Add the
that the need for
some to multi-home and the costs continue to rise.

This is where the FCC, in the role of regulator, would do
the most good.
But as someone mentioned in a previous post the FCC is
feckless at this
point.  Bigger is not necessarily better or worse, but when
government
abdicates its role as the regulator of free markets, it is
most definitely
worse.


Edward Ray 

Eric A. Hall wrote:

> What are people worried about here exactly?

The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we
had in the 1980s?

Granted, it won't ever be quite *that* bad again, but
we're slowly moving
back towards one monolithic ILEC, and that does worry me.

-- 
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek   888-480-4638   PGP:
0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobolJustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley,
CA 92307

> > What are people worried about here exactly?
>
> The same lack of competition in telecommunications that
we had in the 1980s?
>
> Granted, it won't ever be quite *that* bad again, but
we're slowly moving
> back towards one monolithic ILEC, and that does worry
me.

To worry most is the fact that a single company has all
services on a
given area: fixed, wireless, long-distance. I don't think
that having
a single fixed-only company throughout the country would be
such a big
issue... but having the customer first mile (which some
people  call
last mile, although saying customer comes first) and be
allowed to
offer LD and wireless is something to be afraid. Be very
afraid.

Rubens

On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:
> Eric A. Hall wrote:
> 
>>What are people worried about here exactly?
> 
> The same lack of competition in telecommunications that
we had in the 1980s?

Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern is
consolidation then
we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from merging
back in 1997,
since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular, which
is mostly
indistinguishable from the earlier one.

I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T ghost
really, since
there's none of it left.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.o
reilly.com/catalog/coreprot/

On Mar 5, 2006, at 8:05 PM, Eric A. Hall wrote:

>
>
> On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:
>> Eric A. Hall wrote:
>>
>>> What are people worried about here exactly?
>>
>> The same lack of competition in telecommunications
that we had in  
>> the 1980s?
>
> Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern
is  
> consolidation then
> we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from
merging back in  
> 1997,
> since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular,
which is mostly
> indistinguishable from the earlier one.

Sort of.  No offense to Qwest folk, but we're basically
down to a  
duopoly, which really isn't that improved over a single
corporation.   
It will be interesting to see just how much the bells will
compete  
with each other.  Traditionally they haven't.  They would
have  
enjoyed large regulatory freedoms had they left their own
territory  
and gone into each others territories, but they generally
didn't.   
Insert your favorite excuse/fig leaf for why they haven't
in the past  
one or two decades (depending on which regulatory construct
you favor).

If going forward, VZ & ATT do not engage each other,
instead of  
aggressively competing on each others home turf (outside of
wireless  
which), maybe we'll benefit as 3rd parties.  Maybe the DOJ
will take  
notice.  If not, then you end up with two organizations
controlling  
their respective markets and we all lose.  Two because it
seems  
nobody really takes Qwest seriously out of the big three, or
now soon  
to be two.

That being said, the 'new ATT' with all those assets will
need to be  
integrated, and work efficiently.  Turf battles will ensue. 
Tens of  
thousands will get laid off.  This really has a good ways to
go  
before things settle out.  If Atlanta turns into ATT's
version of  
BellSouth's Birmingham, Atlanta isn't going to be a very
fun place to  
be for that crowd.  Which will have ramifications at a much
larger  
scale, far outside telecom.

And, yes, we perhaps should've blocked the NYNEX/BA merger
in 1997.   
I think the underlying problem here is with the entire
telecom  
industry caught up in merger mania for the past decade or
so, nobody  
had a clear idea of what they wanted to see when it was all
done.  Or  
just how far done was.  So, this is much like the pot on the
stove,  
where we as the public/regulators/etc are the frog in the
cold water  
(blissful early 80's) and we can't quite make out when
it's time to  
jump out.

> I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T
ghost really, since
> there's none of it left.

I don't know if I share that view entirely, knowing how
much the AT&T  
brand identity is revered inside (especially inside the baby
boomer  
generation).  Think of the scene from Toy Story
"ooooh, the  
claaaaw".  That gets sort of close to some of my
experiences.

Whether they can convert I think definitely will be a
challenge.  We  
really can't do much more than sit and watch as
individuals, and as  
companies we have to step up our game.  If nothing else,
this should  
dump a good number of good people into the now available
talent pool,  
too.

But, again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure
out that the  
integration nightmares these companies will have will open  
opportunities for smaller, more nimble players. Ultimately,
I think  
Qwest will just wither away and the assets will be sold off
in  
bidding war, post bankruptcy protection.  Or maybe it'll be
 
maintained as the fig leaf.  Who knows.  I'm not sure it
matters.  In  
this game, they're the size of Alltel compared with
individual RBOCs,  
and not really much of a factor.

Then again, this deal isn't done, VZ might counter bid,
divestitures  
may be required, and regulatory review needs to be
conducted, and a  
number of lawsuits dealt with.  So, it'll be a while.  But,
ah, what  
a great way to start the morning. 

Best regards,
Christian

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Christian Kuhtz wrote:

> That being said, the 'new ATT' with all those assets
will need to be 
> integrated, and work efficiently.  Turf battles will
ensue.  Tens of

Integration, going on past experience, is highly unlikely. 
The last time 
I had any interaction with Worldcom regarding
circuit/provisioning issues, 
there was little, if any integration of legacy
engineering/provisioning 
data/OSSen.  In other words, "Oh, that's an MFS
circuit ID, I'll need to 
get onto another system to get the details on it." 
Same thing with 
different incarnations of Bell of Pennsylv^H^H^H^H^HBell 
Atl^H^H^H^HVerizon.  It's the same phenomenon of having 37
different 
numbers to call to get anything done at $RBOC, none of which
are connected 
to each other.  If their phone tree is that disorganized, I
have little 
reason to suspect the underlying support systems are any
different, nor 
will they be under the SB^H^H^HNew AT&T.

jms