In whose best interest?

So much for easing into 1998. Less than 24 hours after most of us had started off the new work year, SBC gave industry watchers a left hook, announcing it was buying SNET (the telco formerly known as Southern New England Telephone) in a stock swap.

The acquisition-assuming it passes muster with all the various regulatory agencies-will be SBC's second major acquisition since passage of the 1996 Telecom Act.

Maybe it was coincidence that the SBC/SNET merger announcement was made less than a week after a Texas judge declared the 14-point checklist unconstitutional. But perhaps it's also time that the industry started asking itself in whose best interest this rush to merge is.

Despite pronouncements by executives, it's not the consumer. One of the intentions of the telecom act was to foster competition in video, data and voice services on the local level. Internet service providers and direct broadcast satellite companies provide options in the first two. However, except for a few isolated areas, consumers still have just a single choice for local voice.

SBC said consumers would be the biggest benefactors of its merger with Pacific Telesis. A few months later, the company shuttered its fledgling video operations in San Jose and Richardson, Texas.

It's also a poorly kept secret among competitive local exchange carriers that SBC is one of the most difficult telcos to work with when it comes to negotiating interconnection.

So whose interests do the mergers serve? Unintentionally, it may be telcos' competitors. It's just a whisper right now, but support is growing for rewriting certain portions of the telecom act. And you can bet that if legislators get another crack at opening the local telephone market, they won't do it with carrots such as allowing RHCs into long-distance.