Tunney Act Hearing Today Good News for Opponents of AT&T/BST Merger

We understand from news reports that at today's Tunney Act hearing Judge Sullivan, who is reviewing the November 2005 SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI mergers, said that he did not have enough information to rule on whether the mergers are in the public interest and established a schedule to receive additional evidence on August 7. This is good news for CompTel and the other parties who have done a fantastic job of highlighting the many anticompetitive harms arising from the mergers and is potenially bad news for the pending AT&T/BellSouth merger. While no one expects last year's mergers to be undone by Judge Sullivan, the door is open now for additional conditions to be imposed on them while at the same time signaling to the FCC and DOJ not to simply rubber stamp the latest AT&T merger, the AT&T/BellSouth merger.