Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) on Monday appointed company veteran Randal Milch as its new executive VP of global public policy and communications.
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Milch (Image source: Verizon) |
Milch, who has been with Verizon and one of its predecessors, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, Maryland (C&P Maryland) since 1993, will take over the reins from Thomas Tauke, who is taking on a new role as a regulatory advisor to its CEO Lowell McAdam.
Milch has plenty of experience to tackle the challenges that will come with this new role. Previously, he served as the senior VP and general counsel of Verizon Business and earlier as the senior vice president and general counsel of Verizon's domestic telecom business.
Verizon, along with fellow RBOC AT&T (NYSE: T), has been a staunch opponent of new FCC regulatory proposals, including net neutrality.
Like Milch, Tauke came to Verizon under NYNEX, the merger of the former New York Telephone and New England Telephone, in 1991.
Among his accomplishments during his 20-year tenure as Verizon's EVP of Public Affairs, Policy and Communications, Tauke helped the telco fight the FCC on such issues as net neutrality and putting together a deal to acquire wireless spectrum from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox.
These appointments are part of a broader strategy the telco is creating to reorganize its federal, state and legal structure.
They also come at a time when the FCC is trying to better understand how the telecom service provider industry is transitioning away from TDM to an all-IP network with the creation of its Technology Transitions Policy Task Force. Verizon, like AT&T, would like to get regulatory relief on having to maintain older TDM networks as it sees more of its consumer and business customers purchase more IP-based services such as IP-based TV and Ethernet.
One of the regulatory issues that Milch will likely be tasked with will be migrating from a copper to a fiber-based network, something it began doing in New York City, where much of its copper infrastructure was damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
For more:
- The Washington Post has this article
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