Uh, hello news media, wake up? Where are you?

Today Ver­i­zon bought World­com (re-renamed “MCI” after their account­ing scan­dal). Ver­i­zon is an RBOC (“baby bell”). MCI is an IXC (a long-distance provider). RBOCs are pro­hib­ited by fuck­ing law from offer­ing Inter-LATA (long dis­tance) phone ser­vice except under very spe­cific con­di­tions imposed by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act of 1996, designed to ensure suf­fi­cient local competition.

If this deal is sealed, either MCI would have to give up long dis­tance ser­vice (thereby becom­ing totally worth­less), Ver­i­zon would have to give up local phone ser­vice (thereby becom­ing mostly worth­less), or Ver­i­zon re-assumes nearly the full power of the pre-1984 AT&T tele­phone monopoly.

Why is nobody writ­ing about this in the press? The poten­tial con­se­quences of this are profound.

Of course, the pen­du­lum of mod­ern busi­ness fash­ion has already swung back toward favor­ing monop­o­lies, so you won’t hear any investors com­plain­ing. The com­pet­i­tive 1990′s are over!