Judge Recommends Verizon Break-up

(Utility Business) Pennsylvania consumers are one step closer to receiving the benefits of local phone service competition thanks to a recommendation from Judge Wayne L. Weismandel. Weismandel’s recommendation reconfirmed the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's 1999 decision ordering Verizon to structurally separate its wholesale and retail units.

The judge recommended that the commission order Verizon to file within 30 days a detailed plan to separate all of its retail functions from its wholesale company; begin a one-year transition period for implementing the plan; and comply with the code of conduct adopted in the commission's decision.

According to Weismandel, by failing to provide verifiable cost studies, Verizon has yet to prove that a full structural separation would cost approximately $1 billion, as it had contended. Verizon's failure to provide the necessary cost support warrants the structural separation of needed elements as the commission deems appropriate.

Verizon controls more than 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s local phone lines, and recently asked the Public Utilities Commission for permission to expand into the state’s long-distance market.