SBC is finally flexing its muscles in the UNE-P side of things, The company and clueless Washington have once again proved that with enough money, anything is for sale. In case you were wondering about my rant, I was responding to this news that SBC has renegotiated its UNE-P pricing contract with Sage Telecom.

bq. SBC announced that it has reached a 7-year UNE-P pricing agreement with one of it competitors, Sage Telecom.  Sage is a CLEC that has around 500K customers in SBC’s region.  Financial details were not provided, but the companies did indicate that average pricing would be below $25/line/month.  This deal comes on the heels of the courts throwing out an FCC mandate that the state regulatory agencies set UNE-P pricing in their respective states.  The FCC is now urging the CLECs and IXCs to negotiate rates directly with the RBOCs. 

Exact financial details are tough to figure out given that all my research is sitting back in Office, but I can say this is a big win for SBC both monetarily and also from a PR standpoint.
 
Loop Capital analysts says that SBC is “probably going to pump this news to promote further agreements with other players in the industry.  Problem is, the bigger IXCs are fighting this tooth-and-nail and most likely will attempt to take this all the way to the Supreme Court in an attempt to return to state-set pricing.”