And now finally, today Thursday 24-March-2011, the Oregon Public Utilities Commission has also approved the pending CenturyLink purchase of Qwest (legacy US-West RBOC, what was once the three BOCs Mountain Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell, and Northwestern Bell).
The OR-PUC board is a 3-member board, but the chairman's position is presently vacant. Both of the current board members voted to approve of the merger, with various conditions.
The FCC announced its approval of the merger a week ago, on Friday
18-March-2011, following a process of several months of approvals from numerous state regulatory agencies, as well as approvals from other federal agencies (SEC, FTC/DOJ/IRS), and approvals from the shareholders of both CenturyLink and Qwest.Thus, this OR-PUC approval was the final approval needed for the pending CenturyLink/Qwest merger (CenturyLink takeover of Qwest). Both companies intend for the merger/takeover to be completed and effective, a week later, on Friday 01-April-2011. This merger/takeover was announced by both Qwest and CenturyLink almost a year ago, on Thursday 22-April-2010.
NOW, it will be interesting to see the regulatory approval process regarding AT&T's (at&t-mobility) takeover of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom, which was announced last Sunday 20-March-2011.
Mark J. Cuccia markjcuccia at yahoo dot com Lafayette LA, formerly of New Orleans LA pre-Katrina