The FCC should meet to vote and approve the AT&T and BellSouth merger next week, and all sides involved are working hard to inject their opinions into the discourse before the meeting. MarketWatch reports that 9 Southern Democratic Senators are urging quick approval, stating AT&T's concessions offer "significant new benefits."

As industry analyst Dave Burstein stated last week however, five of the six concessions AT&T suggests are things the telco was already doing. AT&T also claims that they will adhere to net-neutrality principles for 30 months post-merger, but since the FCC's principles are not legally binding, the promise is an empty one.

Buried among the comments to the FCC on the impact of the merger is this letter from three University of Texas professors, who suggest the merger should not be approved - regardless of conditions. To support their position, they look to past mergers:

"Our results establish that the mergers approved in the past have not created the expected synergy effects that are expected to arise when companies with complementary assets pool their assets together. Mergers have led to increased market power and, therefore, have been of harm to competition. What has increased for the merged firms have been their ability to generate relatively higher revenues relative to those that have not merged."

The central theme of the paper is that the promised benefits from telecom mergers are traditionally not realized, and in fact cause more harm than good. The professors expect the SBC & BellSouth merger to be no different:

"We find that the approval of the mergers in the past have clearly led to welfare losses for the American consumer. The approval of the ATT&T and SBC merger will lead to further substantial negative economic consequences for hundreds of millions of American consumers. Approval of the merger is not in the public interest."

Not everyone shares the professors' skepticism. Among those lobbying in support of the merger are groups like Jessie Jackson's Rainbow Push coalition. Jackson has been arguing the merger will expedite video competition and therefore improve the racial digital divide.