Comptel has filed comments in connection with Tunney Act proceedings pending in United States v. SBC Communications, Inc., which involved SBC's merger with AT&T, and United States v. Verizon Communications, Inc., which involved Verizon's merger with MCI. When the government proposes an antitrust consent decree, as it did in these cases, a court cannot enter it as final until it has reviewed it and made a finding that the decree is in the "public interest" pursuant to the Tunney Act. The government proposed two consent decrees--one for each merger. Comptel apparently opposes the entry of both.
In its response to Comptel's opposition, the Justice Department argues that the government has met the requirements of the Tunney Act by providing the public with all of the documents and information required by the statute. The government defended its investigation of the proposed mergers and the consent decrees:
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that the government properly defined the relevant geographic market as individual buildings because "markets are properly defined based on what options a customer faces" and as "customers for local private lines can select only from the set of providers that offer service to the particular building to which those customers need to connect and the set of providers varies from building to building, it is appropriate to consider markets as small as an individual building";
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that the proposed decrees redress the harm in all 2-to-1 buildings where the government concluded that the proposed merger would cause competitive harm;
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that the resolution of the Qwest/Allegiance merger is irrelevant;
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that the proposed decrees do not increase the risk of collusion; and
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that several sophisticated telecommunications carriers bid for the divestiture assets demonstrates the viability of the divestiture package.
