Backroom TGNT games <A> Lawmaker: BellSouth Sought To Mislead FCC On Long-Distance
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--An influential House lawmaker accused BellSouth Corp. (BLS) of trying to mislead regulators who would decide the fate of its efforts to enter the $80 billion long-distance market.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, R-Va., scolded the Baby Bell for trying to win support for its long-distance applications by offering to drop an unrelated legal challenge against Teligent Inc. (TGNT), a startup wireless company.
The effort didn't go anywhere. But Bliley, in a letter Monday to Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard, said the tactic "reflects very poorly" on the Atlanta-based carrier. A similar letter was sent to BellSouth Chief Executive Duane Ackerman.
"BellSouth's tactics should be seen for what they were: an attempt to mislead the FCC, the Department of Justice, and the American public with regard to the legal and practical sufficiency of BellSouth's application for in-region long-distance permission," Bliley wrote.
BellSouth officials said there was never any attempt to mislead regulators, and insisted the company had done nothing wrong. Had Teligent backed a BellSouth long-distance bid, "it would have had to been built on a factual relationship," said BellSouth Associate General Counsel Bill Barfield.
Barfield said the Commerce Committee concluded that that BellSouth had done nothing to violate the law or FCC regulations. "I don't think the facts support any reason for stirring this up," he added.
Officials at Teligent, of Vienna, Va., declined to comment.
The nation's regional Baby Bells have been barred from offering long-distance within their own service areas since the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984. The recent telecom-reform law lifted that ban for carriers that show they have opened their local calling markets to competition.
The FCC, with input from the Justice Department, determines when a Bell has met the law's market-opening requirements.
In his letter, Bliley urged the FCC to take steps to ensure that filings supporting long-distance applications were genuine, and not "the product of private agreements on unrelated matters.
"In the final analysis, while the committee reviewed only this discrete but important instance, it raises the question of whether other companies may be employing similar tactics," Bliley wrote.
According to the lawmaker, Teligent Chief Executive Alex Mandl telephoned Ackerman last fall to discuss BellSouth's opposition to an FCC decision allocating wireless-communications licenses to Teligent.
Ackerman followed up the initial call by contacting Mandl and "suggesting that Teligent's support for BellSouth's long-distance applications might provide a basis for resolving BellSouth's unrelated legal challenge," Bliley said. |
