Media merger frenzy

This from today's Washington Post:

On the surface, the frenzy of telecommunications mergers in the past few weeks raises relatively clear-cut questions for lawmakers and regulators who will be weighing the deals: Will consumers and businesses be harmed if long-distance choices disappear when AT&T and MCI are swallowed by telephone giants SBC and Verizon?

In many parts of the country, the mergers would mean that two of the top three providers of long-distance telephone service are combining, leaving one overwhelmingly dominant player. Ordinarily, such corporate marriages have trouble getting approved.

But several experts said they expect as many questions to be raised about whether the phone giants would gain too much power over access to the Internet, especially for large businesses.

Worried representatives of large businesses and consumer groups said they will begin sounding the alarm, at the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill.

I'm not an expert in this area of telecommunications regulation, but it seems that those companies that are about to be swallowed up, like AT&T and MCI, are also "major providers of the 'Internet backbone'". The companies that buy them - SBC (Southern Bell) and Verizon - could end up having a near-monopoly over most people's - and companies' - access to the Internet, and could charge accordingly. And that would be bad.