There May Be Choices, but They Aren't Always Easy - New York Times

There May Be Choices, but They Aren't Always Easy - New York Times

An interesting human interest twist on the ATT-BLS merger, but the consumer advocates always barking up the tree of more competition fail to appreciate the inroads that VoIP continues to make and the fact that all the major telcos continue to lose land based access lines.

Clearly the long term future of voice telephony belongs to wireless and VoIP.

The merger will mostly produce efficiencies in reducing the number of employees (10,000+?) and enabling consolidation of billing and better management of Cingular. Two years will be required to digest the SBC-ATT merger and the ATT-BLS merger. Although the regulators may look hard at the terms and conditions, I think they will allow the merger.

Here's additional reasonable analysis of the proposed merger by Belson of the Times.

Verizon now needs to buy Vodaphone's stake in Verizon Wireless.

While no one seems to want Qwest, perhaps Sprint could be a target for Verizon after they absorb MCI.