ACTeL: Creating the Framework for Net Neutrality

When Verizon and SBC announced plans to acquire AT&T and MCI, The Alliance for Competition in Telecommunications (ACTeL) knew their members faced a potential crisis. Unless federal regulators insisted on strict conditions protecting smaller players from anti-competitive practices, the merger would create near-total market consolidation threatening the continued viability of competition.

ACTel hired Crawford to orchestrate public opposition through multi-layered PR: local, national and “inside the beltway.”

Crawford started with a Washington, D.C press conference to alert regulators to merger dangers. The event won coverage in key trades read by regulatory decision-makers: Communications Daily, TR Daily, Telephony and InfoWorld, plus the National Journal and the Bloomberg and Dow Jones wires.

We raised the heat, booking one-on-one press meetings leading to coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and on NPR.

Next we took Alliance executives on the road to meet face-to-face with local press in markets where large business customers and members of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) held sway. Anti-merger coverage appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Albany Times Union, The Buffalo News, The Austin American-Statesman, The Richmond Times Dispatch, The Virginia Pilot, The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus Business First and The Newark Star-Ledger.

Competition had found its voice. When the FCC voted on the mergers, approval was granted only if the Bells agreed not to block competitors’ VoIP, video and other Internet services.

Although no one could have foreseen it at the time, this campaign ultimately would have far-reaching consequences on policy governing the Internet. The FCC’s conditions on the two mergers would become the test bed for net neutrality, today’s policy preventing non-discriminatory practices on the Web and ensuring competition and freedom of access.