The Federal Communications Commission may be deadlocked 2-2 on AT&T's proposed buyout of BellSouth, but nobody is taking any chances. Interested networking companies, non-profits, trade associations, and city governments kept the ears of the agency's Commissioners and staff busy on the matter close to the eve of Turkey Hour.

Here is some of the blow-by-blow:

• Gene Kimmelman of the Consumers Union met with two FCC reps on November 20th.
  Kimmelman stressed the Union's "significant concerns" about the merger. Consumers should be able to buy DSL from AT&T without having to buy other services, and "at a price significantly below what AT&T has previously offered." Plus: "AT&T can not discriminate against or favor particular Internet traffic traversing its network"—a principle popularly known as net-neutrality.
• Time Warner Telecom Inc., not to be confused with Time Warner Cable, met with Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps'  advisor Scott Deutschman on the 17th.
  The broadband network provider reiterated its long expressed worry that the merger will eliminate AT&T and BellSouth as competitors in the selling of fiber access to smaller telcos (like Time Warner Telecom).
• On the same day a representative from CompTel, the communications services trade association, met with Deutschman and Scott Bergman, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein's legal advisor.
  At the meeting the rep reiterated conditions for the merger proposed in late September by CompTel, Time Warner Telecom, and several other groups. The requirements would include price caps for service access and a commercial arbitration system for disputes.
• The Hon. Tyrone Ellis, Chairman of the Public Utilities Committee of the State of Mississippi, mailed in his endorsement of the AT&T/BellSouth merger, as did Lambert C. Bossiere the Third, member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
• Ditto for the Urban League of Central Carolinas, the NAACP, the South Florida Council of Fire Fighters, and Bill Purcell, Mayor of Nashville, Tennessee, soon to host the FCC's next public hearing on its media ownership rules.

Meanwhile reporters and bloggers everywhere are busily speculating whether the FCC's General Counsel will rule that Republican Commissioner and former CompTel lobbyist Robert M. McDowell can vote on the proposed merger, thus breaking the present 2/2 tie (Democrats vs. Republicans) that currently prevails.

If not, McDowell must stay out of the matter until June 1st, 2007, the day that marks the end of his first year on the FCC.

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