Latest news with #VandanaVenkatesh
Epoch Times
17-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
FCC Green-Lights Verizon's Acquisition Deal Following DEI Shutdown
The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Wireline Competition Bureau approved Verizon's $20 billion acquisition of Frontier on Friday, the FCC said in a May 16 'Verizon has also committed to ending DEI-related practices as specified in the FCC's record and has reaffirmed the merged entity's commitment to equal opportunity and nondiscrimination,' the agency said. 'This will ensure that the combined business will enact policies and practices consistent with the law and the public interest.' The FCC approval comes a day after Verizon 'Verizon recognizes that some DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination,' Vandana Venkatesh, the company's chief legal officer, said in the May 15 letter. The changes were being made 'not just in name or in the way they are described, but in substance.' The company shall no longer take into account identity-based goals when considering hiring, promotions, and bonuses for executives. Verizon said it updated supplier and sponsorship policies to remove gender- and race-based criteria. Related Stories 5/16/2025 3/29/2025 In a May 16 Back in February, Carr had suggested Verizon's DEI efforts could influence the agency's decision on the Verizon-Frontier deal. With the transaction now approved, Verizon can upgrade and expand Frontier's existing network spread across 25 states. Verizon is expecting to deploy fiber connections to 1 million or more homes every year, said the FCC statement. 'By approving this deal, the FCC ensures that Americans will benefit from a series of good and commonsense wins. The transaction will unleash billions of dollars in new infrastructure builds in communities across the country—including rural America,' Carr said. 'This investment will accelerate the transition away from old, copper line networks to modern, high-speed ones. And it delivers for America's tower and telecom crews who do the hard, often gritty work needed to build high-speed networks.' Frontier is the Carr Targeting DEI President Donald Trump had 'The FCC's most recent budget request said that promoting DEI was the agency's second-highest strategic goal,' Carr said in an X post later that day. 'Starting next year, the FCC will end its promotion of DEI.' The post included a screenshot of the FCC's 'Strategic Goal 2' at the time, according to which 'advancing equity is core to the agency's management and policymaking processes and will benefit all Americans.' After Trump 'In the very first section of the Communications Act, Congress stated that it created the FCC for the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication 'without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex,'' he said. 'Promoting invidious forms of discrimination runs contrary to the Communications Act and deprives Americans of their rights to fair and equal treatment under the law.' Carr said he was eliminating DEI from the FCC's strategic plan and budget, ending the agency's DEI advisory group and equity action plan, and getting rid of DEI analysis from FCC economic reports, among other things. In a March 27 letter, Carr
The Verge
16-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
FCC approves Verizon's $20 billion merger after it commits to ‘ending' DEI
Verizon's $ 20 billion deal to acquire the fiber internet provider Frontier is officially happening. On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission signed off on the merger, which will allow Verizon to 'upgrade and expand' Frontier's existing fiber networks. Verizon expects to bring fiber to 1 million homes each year following the acquisition. The deal went through after Verizon 'committed to ending DEI-related practices,' according to a statement by FCC Chair Brendan Carr. The Intercept reports that in a May 15th letter to Carr, Verizon's chief legal officer, Vandana Venkatesh, outlined what it's walking away from. Because 'Verizon recognizes that some DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination,' it will no longer have any HR roles or teams focused on DEI, remove references to the term from employee training materials, as well as goals for diversity in its supplies, representation of women and minorities in its workforce. In the letter, Venkatesh says that now Verizon's public messaging is going to 'remove references to 'DEI' or 'diversity, equity and inclusion.'' When Verizon's consumer chief, Sowmyanarayan Sampath, appeared on Decoder last month, we asked him about whether it would fight the FCC imposing regulatory requirements against its diversity initiatives with a decade's worth of lawsuits, the same way it fought net neutrality. It didn't. Earlier this year, Carr criticized Verizon's 'lack of progress' on getting rid of policies related to DEI — or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — and suggested that the agency won't approve deals if companies keep these policies in place. T-Mobile similarly closed its acquisition of the fiber provider Lumos after tweaking mentions of DEI on its website. Through the merger, Verizon will also be able to claw back some of its fiber business after it sold parts of its wireline operations, including Fios fiber internet connections, to Frontier in 2015. Carr said the merger will allow fiber to come to more communities, including rural ones. BEAD, a Biden-era initiative, was supposed to pay fiber providers to bring high-speed internet to rural areas, but a report from The Washington Post suggests that the 'money isn't flowing.'
