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Verizon/XO Gets Last State OK, But Pa. Commissioners Raise Concerns

Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioners raised jobs and competition concerns Thursday before voting 5-0 to approve Verizon/XO Communications without conditions. The order is the last regulatory OK the deal needed, and a Verizon spokesman said the company aims to close the…

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purchase of XO “in the coming days.” While voting to allow the deal, Commissioner David Sweet said he worried about not including a condition to protect jobs of Pennsylvania employees after New York and New Jersey required Verizon to keep the jobs for four years (see 1701240051). “I fear that that places a bull's-eye on the backs of Pennsylvania employees since we are neighbors of New York and New Jersey, and we apparently are not going to impose the similar condition that I would have liked to have seen us done,” Sweet said. Commissioner John Coleman said he was sympathetic to Sweet’s employment concern, but didn’t want to “handcuff” the companies: “There is a higher goal here, and that is to preserve the company itself.” Chairwoman Gladys Brown said she would have supported conditions on business data services: “Adding Pennsylvania-specific conditions regarding its Internet Protocol interconnection agreements, DS1 and DS3 loop circuits and the current federal requirement to provide the functional equivalent of DS1 and DS3 loops whenever copper network facilities are retired could have gone a long way in strengthening the commission’s finding of affirmative public benefits.”