BT Comments on AT&T-Unisource deal.WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 13, 1994--Following today's announcement that AT&T intends to form a new company with Unisource, BT North America (BTNA BTNA British Telecommunications North America ) has asked the FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. to take a close look at the alliance to determine whether the deal is in the public's interest. James E. Graff II, president of BT North America, said: "AT&T's Unisource partners have the significant ability to use their monopolistic powers to discriminate against potential competitors. The same market conditions required by the FCC prior to its approval of the BT-MCI alliance should be applied to this AT&T deal. These conditions are liberalization lib·er·al·ize v. lib·er·al·ized, lib·er·al·iz·ing, lib·er·al·iz·es v.tr. To make liberal or more liberal: "Our standards of private conduct have been greatly liberalized . . . , privatization and effective regulation. "While it may or may not be true that Unisource is seeking to do business directly in the US, AT&T's partners may well have contractual obligations or inducements to steer their monopoly customers to WorldPartner's networks - to the detriment of competing carriers. Having first challenged the BT-MCI relationship because of such concerns and now having justifiably raised much more troubling discrimination concerns about Sprint's proposed alliance with PTT (1) (Postal, Telegraph & Telephone) The governmental agency responsible for combined postal, telegraph and telephone services in many European countries. (2) See push-to-talk. PTT - Post, Telephone and Telegraph administration monopolies, AT&T owes the commission a full explanation regarding its alliances with other dominant European PTT's. "AT&T stated last week (see BUSINESS WIRE) that they felt the FCC should not look into its deal because unlike the BT-MCI deal it involved no equity stake. As this is no longer the case, they would now presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. accept that they should have to go through the same scrutiny as BT and MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. ." CONTACT: BTNA Jim Barron, 212/418-7860 |
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