How a Faster Broadband Definition Could Hurt Comcast Merger → snow crash

This merger might as well go as far as full monopoly status across the country. I mean, why did we break up the phone company in the first place? They've only re-assembled themselves for the most party anyway.

Eventually, it'd be nice to see a more complete description of broadband to include provisions for the "prime directive" (neutrality), as well as less capping.

All this posturing on speed, while ignoring two other very fundamentally important aspects is a disservice to everyone.

In case you haven't noticed, people are dropping their wireline phone service as fast as they can, in favor of wireless.

So while I agree the wireline monopoly has basically reassembled itself, who cares? AT&T sold off its Connecticut wireline business and I'm sure they'd be happy to dump even more of it on Frontier or another company stupid enough to buy it.

It's the wireless companies we should keep an eye on; they were never subject to the federal anti-trust case.

Oh? Isn't Verizon a former "Baby Bell"?

Yes VZ wireline was a Baby Bell, but VZ wireless was never part of AT&T so AT&T was not required to divest itself of the Bell cellular companies. In other words, they were never subject to the anti-trust case, like I said earlier. You can read the terms of the anti-trust decision here:

»web.archive.org/web/2006 ··· cree.pdf

You can see it applies to local telecommunications service; wireless is never mentioned. In other words, the break-up of the Bell System applied to the wireline network, not the wireless operations.