FCC TRYING A DECEMBER SURPRISE
According to The Nation, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has bent the rules to force FCC commissioner Robert McDowell to "un-recuse" himself and vote on the telecommunications merger issue.
The FCC Chairman appears to have an unreported, unacknowledged conflict of interest himself. Allegedly, FCC Chair Kevin Martin has plans to run for Governor of NC and he is hoping to be able to have the favor returned with lots of telecommunications money for his campaign coffers. Therefore, he is trying to rush the telecommunications merger of AT&T and Bell South throught the FCC with NO NET NEUTRALITY GUARANTEES. Martin knows that the new Congress will not go along with such a maneuver.
Martin is IGNORING the voices of the overwhelming majority of the American people who continually contact the FCC making their voices heard to preserve Net Neutrality. The difficulty is that Martin only appears to "hear" the voices of the special lobbyists with money.
Contact the FCC toll free at 1-866-418-0232 to voice your concerns and ask how to file an official complaint to stop this merger from occurring in December with no Net Neutrality guarantee.. . You might ask who you call to report a the FCC Chair's possible conflict of interest in this matter.
Martin is undermining the public interests he is supposed to be protecting.
It's also a good idea to contact the new Democratic leaders of Congress and members of the Senate Commerce Committee and ask them to intervene to prevent the FCC from selling us out on Net Neutrality to the telecommunications industry. The subcommittee members phone numbers are here.
ACt now and SAVE NET NEUTRALITY.
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5 comments:
Mosquito- I work on net neutrality issues and am confused as to how McDowell's unrecusal presents a conflict of interest. His former employer, Comptel, is a competitor of AT&T and BellSouth, and therefore opposes the merger. A conflict would only present itself if McDowell were to vote against the merger, which from my understanding, doesn't appear to be likely to happen.
The Conflict of Interest involves the Net Neutrality Issue that ALL telecommunications wish to profit from at the consumer's expense.
The FCC Chair had McDowell "un-recuse" himself b/c he wants to complete the ATT/BellSouth merger BEFORE the new Dongress with his for Net Neutrality comes aboard....
FCC Martin would not be lobbying to get this guy's vote if he was going to vote to "kill" the merger....but wouldn't that be wonderful if he did.
Buzz...Buzz...Mosquito...
Hands off the net....
Since this is your specialty area would you give me your "take" on this?
My main concern is the net neutrality issue....even though I'm not in favor of the merger....
Hi Mosquito- The position of the HOTI coalition is that the issue of net neutrality has no place in the merger of two individual companies and should instead be addressed on an industry-wide level. For further reading, I'd recommend this post from Scott Cleland over at the Precursor Blog: http://www.precursorblog.com/node/235
I suggest you check out SAVE THE INTERNET Coalition. The HOTI group (Hands off the Internet) is one of those FAKE grassroots groups that is actually a FRONG GROUP FOR THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY.
Google it and you'll see.
The merger of ATT and Bell South itself is outrageous since their monopoly was only recently broken up....But to allow them to merge and "do business" as an ISP provider with no guarantee of Net Neutrality is DEFINITELY NOT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.
I'm sick of corporations who think they invented the internet and that it is their territory to control and not a public commons. The inventor of the net wisely created the structure with Net Neutrality and we don't need greedy corporations dismantling a great structure that serves the public interest.
ISP providers make their money giving us an on ramp to the internet....and they should not be allowed to control the internet itself.
That's my Buzz... Buzz...
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