The Trail Deadends in Dutch

It began innocently enough: I happened to spot an article about Democrats versus demographics, which went on to describe what impact baby boomers might have on the market when they begin withdrawing money from 401(k) plans, when lo and behold, there in the middle of the article, was a wee bit of an endorsement for Verizon as a dividend stock for the years to come.

From there I popped over to check out Verizon on Yahoo! and immediately spotted a bunch of press releases announcing the arrival or imminent arrival of the company’s fiber-to-the-home FiOS service to various communities, and I guess it was the number of releases that caught my eye. More and more lucky people will have the option of subscribing to some really fast broadband, and the communities are appear to be fairly widespread.

Then a friend sent me a link to another blog wherein the author discussed his experience with Verizon’s fiber installation process, in a rural area, sort of an exercise in long distance trenching, and free of charge at that. The writer included the requisite discussion of net neutrality – I see net neutrality mentioned everywhere, it seems – making the connection to appropriate policies to encourage investment, and so it was confirmed that this blog was going to be about Verizon.

The net neutrality bit is beginning to worry me, though, because it has that familiar feel of obsession; some years back, I might glimpse an old tractor behind a farm shed, while driving down a country road, and in seconds I’ve already processed the approximate year, styled versus unstyled, or possibly even late styled, and how it compared with the one I supposedly was restoring, and more to the point, did it have any parts I needed?

Along this circuitous path to Verizon, as in retracing steps, or links to be more precise, I had to wade through a slew of articles about Verizon’s deal to take YouTube mobile, as in Google’s YouTube, and Google proper, it seems, also has online ambitions – and is talking with Sprint and Cingular.

With these announcements, my own personal theory on net neutrality’s eventual fate came one step closer to reality – there will be so many interwoven, interlinked and interlocked deals inked that nobody will be able to unravel things for years to come. Under this scenario, with any luck, it will take a team of CSI-style forensic policy technicians leaning over the dramatically lighted table, poring over evidence, in order to figure out who stood for which position on whatever date.

Meanwhile, “nothing continues to happen” – which phrase happens to be the name of a 20^th century chair design.

Art Furniture
Furniture made by artists as a piece for “art’s sake.” Various artists express this new design approach individualistically, each creating a unique piece or collection. These pieces may or may not be functional or comfortable. Some examples that have received national acclaim are Queen Anne, Queen Anne by Terrance and Laura Main, and Nothing Continues to Happen, by Howard Meister.

I wasn’t sure about the chair’s exact name, though, and I wanted to include a picture of it, so in running that down, while searching “nothing continues to happen,” I thought I saw at least one search result on… net neutrality… and another result saying something about the FCC, but at least I didn’t run across anything on tractors.

For those so interested, the chair dates from the early 80’s, and certainly is striking, in what might possibly be interpreted as an 80’s sort of way, and it looks way uncomfortable (flat steel seat and back, no armrest) but I have yet to find a picture of it, online, and the glossary entry from above is from a website written partially in Dutch, so the trail ends there.

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Following this week’s announcement that Deutsche Telekom decided to go with a new CEO (René Obermann) in order to address shareholder concerns, a sharp eyed reader read somewhere that the transition will take place while the carrier struggles to win a “regulatory holiday” from the EU for its high speed fiber network.

I’d written previously about this little bone of contention between DT and the regulators in Brussels, as well as other, similar squabbles, but what struck this particular reader was the cheery nature of the request for regulatory forbearance – a holiday – and following an e-mail to several people, we began wondering who could resist such a positive spin on things?

Who doesn’t want a holiday? Particularly as the holidays approach?

I mean, if you don’t want a holiday, you might also be the type to oppose net neutrality or some other such noble sounding thing, like “universal broadband," for instance. Anyway, since no one wants to go on record opposing “recess” or “vacation,” it’s pretty clear that coming up with the right packaging gets you more than halfway to your goal, and if getting there is half the fun, then this truly is, because by coining a phrase that sounds truly worthy, you sandbag your opponents by making them appear obstinate and crusty, and more than a little out of touch.

I believe that at least one political campaign in the recent elections featured claims of one candidate liking or not liking puppies, with a suitable response and parry from the opposing camp, and so on; one may as well be aware that by coming up with the right concept and couple of words, one might said to be in the same league as apple pie, mom, and, here’s an odd one that I think became lodged in my brain from a previous marketing campaign – Chevrolet.

See how powerful these images can be? It’s like they never really go away, with longer half lives than well over half the elements on the Periodic Table.

I’m thinking of proposing that we form a committee to go over some appropriate terms or phrases, with the caveat that no meeting begins before 5, with the understanding that this is the fun part, coming up with the right phrase, because the other part of the “ask” is deciding what we actually want to ask for, as in what goal we’re trying to achieve (for the good of humanity, of course).

That’s a different issue altogether, another story for another time. Anyway, couple the agreed upon goal with the appropriate, or should I say “winning?” word that completes the fun or worthy statement, that in turn becomes inextricably bound with and part of our goal, and there’s simply no way we won’t achieve success beyond our wildest dreams, in the regulatory sense, that is. 

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If one views the AT&T BellSouth merger and proposed concessions in the same light as previously approved telecom mergers – which closed just over a year ago, between SBC and AT&T, and Verizon and MCI – that was then, this is now, as they say.

Opponents of the AT&T BellSouth merger recommend a number of options for the FCC, from rejecting the application outright, or, in the alternative, imposing a number of conditions on the carrier for competitive reasons, for various lengths of time.

Following the agency’s first postponed open meeting to review the merger, AT&T publicly offered a number of concessions to encourage the FCC to approve the deal. Opponents claim these concessions are inadequate. The current status of the merger is downtown limbo.

As one of its concessions, AT&T has offered to comport with the FCC’s net neutrality guidelines for 30 months following close of the merger – AT&T agreed to a similar 24 month period last year in the merger with SBC, and from all accounts, is comporting with all due care – but even a longer time frame, imposed on an even larger company, is no longer viewed by some advocates as adequate to protect the Internet.

The merger in question would create the largest telephone company in the nation, with 70 million wireline and 54 million wireless users, and 10 million broadband subscribers.

Given the entrenched state of affairs between the applicants and opponents, and particularly on the adequacy of consumer and competitive protections necessary to obtain FCC approval, the 2 to 2 tie vote of FCC commissioners with one commissioner abstaining from voting, and the substantially altered political landscape in Congress following last Tuesday’s election, it is fairly safe to say that this merger is not following the script drafted in last year’s big telco mergers; which is to say, for this merger, it will be more of the same.

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I've had this one in the hopper for a while, and, though I should know better by now, I kept revising it until it ceased to make sense anymore, to anyone. Then things would change again, and... but I guess it goes with the territory.

I recently posted some thoughts about the AT&T and BellSouth merger (Merger Made Easy, October 2006), soon after the FCC postponed voting on the application once, no twice, from the original time and date, then pushed off voting yet again until November 3 – which also was postponed.

Here's a link to the item deleting the merger application from the agenda meeting on November 3.

The originally scheduled vote, at an open (as in to the public) FCC meeting, was originally scheduled to be made in tandem with the FCC’s introduction of a Notice of Inquiry on Net Neutrality, which item now seems to have disappeared. The net neutrality piece was not listed on the agenda for the November 3 meeting, and therefore not deleted, but the long and short of all this is there is no indication of when the merger will be rescheduled, or the net neutrality item either.

It's amazing what a couple days' delay will do to an item...

Following the record being re-opened on the AT&T BellSouth merger, various parties implored the FCC to impose strong net neutrality conditions on the merger, amongst other conditions, such as outright denial.