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> just like Verizon and AT&T.

As an European I never understood what is the "strategic" interest of Washington to protect the telecom companies. This might have made sense 20 years ago, but now that these companies tend to become like any other utility companies I don't see why the Government would care if they break up or if new (possibly foreign) competitors appear.

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Um... https://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+Snowden

Because I think yashkadakia's Google link was too oblique a response, here's my answer: the concerns are that A) a foreign owned U.S. telecom might refuse to provide the data NSA or other government agencies want (or reveal that they had been asked) and B) a foreign owned U.S. telecom might do the same sort of spying on behalf of their "home" country.

To add to this, the value of the duopoly of AT&T and Verizon, is also the ease of having two targets that make up the extreme majority of all telephone calls / wireless data / and a lot of broadband access. If you're the government and you want to spy on domestic calls and data, it sure beats having to deal with a market in which dozens of companies split the marketshare. This last point is also one of the reasons why the former telecom monopoly of the old AT&T was allowed to be recombined after having been split into pieces.

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