A week ago, the AT&T-BellSouth merger appeared on track, all but certain to receive final governmental approval. Even the Department of Justice approved the merger without conditions. Yet after Friday’s postponement of the FCC’s vote, the final approval of the merger seems more remote and tenuous than ever. What happened?

The past week has seen has seen a series of procedural missteps that have surely left investors in AT&T and Bell-South — and any other company contemplating a merger — puzzled.

There was no hint that the FCC would do anything other than approve the merger perhaps with a few conditions. On Wednesday, the DoJ announced that it was approving the merger without any conditions. The two Democratic FCC commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, were surprised. In practically every other merger between major telecommunications companies over the past decade, the DoJ attached at least a few conditions.

At the FCC, the views of the two Democratic commissioners matter especially on this merger because only four commissioners vote. The fifth commissioner, Robert McDowell, having previously worked as general counsel for a trade association that filed comments in this proceeding, has recused himself. One of the Democrats must vote for the merger if it is ever to be approved. The FCC will take the next two weeks to review the most recent conditions proposed by AT&T and others.

While it is possible that the FCC will vote on the merger as now scheduled on November 3, a vote may also be delayed until after the November elections. Some new Congressional committee chairs may seek to hold hearings on the entire merger review process and request the FCC to delay a vote until after those hearings are held. Whether the FCC commissioners would accommodate a Congressional request for an extended delay remains to be seen.

In a rational world of governmental merger review, the decision of the DoJ or the Federal Trade Commission on matters of competition and consumer protection would be final. If Google purchases YouTube, or if any company purchases General Motors, the primary and final antitrust review will be by either DoJ or the FTC. That is the way mergers are handled, except in certain regulated industries such as telecommunications where the FCC must also approve a merger.

To block a merger, the DoJ must file suit in court subject to predictable antitrust legal standards. For a merger to be approved without condition is the default position. For the FCC, however, no legal suit is required to block a merger. Indeed, the default position is that the merger is not approved because the FCC must actively decide to approve it.

The legal standard for FCC approval is the “public interest,” which has been used over the past decade to impose conditions on many mergers. The FCC by itself has blocked only one merger in recent memory, the EchoStar-DirecTV merger a few years ago.

Of course, the FCC and other regulatory agencies can and should have a role in reviewing mergers, but it should be limited to ensuring that the merging parties have complied with existing agency rules. But practically all of the recommended conditions for the AT&T-BellSouth merger are unrelated to existing rules and would involve the creation of company-specific rules that would limit future AT&T behavior. Moreover, some of the proposed conditions would remedy problems unrelated to the merger that pertain to an entire industry, but the specific remedy would apply only to AT&T.

The merger review process at the FCC has become an exercise in creating company-specific rules rather than a review of past compliance with industry-wide rules.

Communications law in America is now codified in dozens of different company-specific exceptions reflecting past merger conditions. In most instances, these new company-specific rules are designed to remedy perceived problems related to excessive market power and reduced consumer protection, the very same concerns addressed by the DoJ and the FTC under more predictable antitrust legal standards. Ironically, company-specific FCC merger conditions are rarely enforced.

The FCC’s review of the AT&T-Bell-South merger is clouded with uncertainty, an unfortunate result given that predictability reinforces the efficient rule of law.The entire federal merger review process that involves sequential review by both antitrust agencies and regulatory agencies needs serious review.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com