A group of competitive telecommunications carriers and members of the Alliance for Competition in Telecommunications (ACTel) a petition urging the FCC to deny the proposed merger of Verizon and MCI.
The group, which includes Cbeyond Communications, Conversent Communications, Eschelon Telecom, NuVox Comunications, TDS Metrocom and XO Communications, raised the specter of continued telecom industry concentration driving reduced choices, slower innovation and higher costs for businesses and consumers — and of even stronger monopolies bent on controlling the market. The group argues that that in the nine years since passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Verizon has repeatedly violated the law and ignored the conditions barring anticompetitive practices in its own prior merger accords.
