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FCC Near Approval of AT&T-DirecTV Deal
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has recommended that his fellow commissioners approve AT&T's planned $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV, and the Department of Justice has also cleared the deal:
The proposed approval includes a requirement that AT&T build out high-speed Internet connections to 12.5 million customer locations and share with the FCC all traffic exchange agreements it strikes with content and web transit companies.
AT&T would also pledge to count its affiliated video services toward any data caps on fixed broadband connections, according to the proposed conditions.
In a first for the FCC, Wheeler is also seeking to set up an independent officer to help ensure AT&T complies with the conditions in the long run.
Wheeler's outlined conditions mark an end of negotiations between the company and the agency as the FCC sought to make sure that the merger serves the public interest. The Justice Department ensures that mergers comply with antitrust law.
Video companies Netflix Inc and Dish Network Corp, traffic company Cogent Communications Holdings Inc and others had pushed for limitations to AT&T's power to slow down or charge fees for the web traffic traveling through its networks, as well as protections for rival video services.
Previous coverage of the proposed acquisition. Netflix recently supported a merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable.
AT&T Wins FCC Chairman's Support for DirecTV Merger
Per United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Wheeler:
An order recommending that the AT&T/DirecTV transaction be approved with conditions has circulated to the Commissioners. The proposed order outlines a number of conditions that will directly benefit consumers by bringing more competition to the broadband marketplace. If the conditions are approved by my colleagues, 12.5 million customer locations will have access to a competitive high-speed fiber connection. This additional build-out is about 10 times the size of AT&T's current fiber-to-the-premise deployment, increases the entire nation's residential fiber build by more than 40 percent, and more than triples the number of metropolitan areas AT&T has announced plans to serve.
In addition, the conditions will build on the Open Internet Order already in effect, addressing two merger-specific issues. First, in order to prevent discrimination against online video competition, AT&T will not be permitted to exclude affiliated video services and content from data caps on its fixed broadband connections. Second, in order to bring greater transparency to interconnection practices, the company will be required to submit all completed interconnection agreements to the Commission, along with regular reports on network performance.
Importantly, we will require an independent officer to help ensure compliance with these and other proposed conditions. These strong measures will protect consumers, expand high-speed broadband availability, and increase competition.
In Upside-down World, fewer competitors=more competition.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MrGuy on Wednesday July 22 2015, @09:05PM
This is the same phrasing Verizon used to sell New York City and the state of New York on subsidizing it's FiOS rollout to New York.
Verizon has gone back on its word multiple times, tried to pass off "we have a fiber nearby even though you can't use it" as "access" and generally failed to deliver anything approaching what it promised.
Here [capitalnewyork.com] are just a sample [nbcnewyork.com] of the reasons [huffingtonpost.com] why a promise to "have access to" fiber service isn't worth the 1's and 0's it's printed on.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Francis on Wednesday July 22 2015, @11:15PM
That's one question. Another question is why we need to approve this merger to convince them to expand their markets. The only reason why any of the incumbents are expanding their fiber is because Google scared the crap out of them by doing it themselves in a few areas.
Fiber has technically reached me, but it will be a few weeks before it gets rolled out. I doubt that would have happened if CenturyLink hadn't bought the local phone company. Probably the only time I can recall the level of services improving following a merger.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @01:18AM
That's the problem. There's no incentive for the companies to invest in infrastructure unless there's going to be a huge payday in the future. On the merger front, the companies spend the money in order to look good with the regulators, get the deal done, take home the cash, and then drop everything. Verizon is up-front that the margins on its wireless business are greater than its land-line FiOS business. So instead of investing in FiOS, it will invest in wireless because it can generate more revenue changing an arm and a leg to download a little bit of data rather than wiring a big fat Internet pipe to someone's home where they can download the same content in a spit second.
The problem is that the government isn't playing hardball with these greedy knaves. If the FCC threatened to make trouble for Verizon's wireless business unless it made good on its promise to New York, you'd see Verizon change its tune. Of course, the fact that we're dealing with different governments here, City vs State vs Federal, that are never on the same page.