Verizon, SBC Purchases Cleared; Conditions Set

FCC has approved Verizon’s $8.6 billion purchase of MCI and SBC’s $16 billion acquisition of AT&T…

Some conditions were set for the clearance, after intense negotiations:

– Verizon and SBC will freeze rates for leasing some wholesale access to their networks for 30 months.

– The two companies to offer high-speed Internet service without requiring customers to also subscribe to local telephone service for two years.

– They also agreed for two years to permit customers to surf anywhere they choose on the Internet and use any applications on it.

– Verizon and SBC also agreed for three years to continue swapping Internet traffic with the same number of providers that they do now.

Tons of more info on FCC’s site…Word and Acrobat files (why the hell don’t they just have HTML pages?)

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