PENALTY PLAN IMPERILS MERGER, PHONE FIRMS SAY.Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services Pacific Telesis and SBC (1) (SBC Communications Inc., San Antonio, TX, www.sbc.com) A large, national telecommunications company that grew from a multitude of local and regional companies, including Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, into a single, unified brand by 2002. Communications warned Friday that they might call off their merger if state regulators follow a recommendation from administrative law judges that the phone giants pay more than $750 million in penalties for the deal to go through. ``If the proposed decision is adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC; also often commonly referred to as simply the PUC) [1] is a state Public Utilities Commission which regulates privately-owned utilities in the state of California, including electric power, , it could seriously jeopardize the merger,'' said Phil Quigley, Pacific Telesis Group chairman and chief executive officer. However, PacTel Senior Vice President Dick Odgers said the companies expect the CPUC CPUC California Public Utilities Commission CPUC Current Procurement Unit Cost will ignore the recommendation from Judges Kim Malcolm and Janet Econome. He also stressed the merger will create 1,000 new jobs and $100 million in additional economic activity in California. The proposed penalty is based on state law designed to allow customers to share in the benefits of a merger of utilities. Quigley said that application of the law is flawed because the companies are not utilities, but diversified holding companies. ``Also, the law was written when we didn't have competition in the local telephone business like we do today from about 100 competitors,'' Quigley said. The merger was announced in April and the combined company would have operations in California, Nevada and the Southwest. It has been approved by the the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Attorney General The California Attorney General is the State Attorney General of the government of the state of California in the USA. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" (California Constitution, Article V, Section 13. and the Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. . In a separate development, California's largest long-distance phone companies say many customers want to switch to them for local phone service but are being stalled by PacTel's Pacific Bell. A PUC (Public Utility Commission) A regulatory body in every state in the U.S. that governs public utilities within its jurisdiction such as electricity, gas, oil, sewer, water, transportation and telephone service. Some states call it the Public Service Commission (PSC). judge on Friday scheduled hearings for May 12-16 on the dispute among Pacific Bell, the state's largest local phone company, and competitors AT&T, Sprint 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. . The commission's eventual decision could affect Pacific Bell's plans to enter the long-distance market. The PUC has ordered Pacific Bell to give competitors access to its local phone network and allow them to resell the service under their own names. Competitors say customers who ask to change companies have been required by Pacific Bell to wait many days or even weeks while paperwork is completed. |
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