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FCC Chairman Says His Agency Won't Review AT&T's Time Warner Purchase (engadget.com)
Today, FCC commissioner Ajit Pai confirmed that his agency would not review AT&T's Time Warner purchase, clearing the way for the Justice Department to likely approve the deal. Engadget reports: Last month, AT&T revealed how it might structure its deal to acquire Time Warner without having to go through FCC review. The communications giant noted that it "anticipated that Time Warner will not need to transfer any of its FCC licenses ... after the closing of the transaction." That means that the FCC wouldn't need to review the transaction. "That is the regulatory hook for FCC review," Pai said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "My understanding is that the deal won't be presented to the commission." The WSJ notes that this would leave the Justice Department as the only governmental agency reviewing the potential deal. Time Warner has said that it has "dozens" of FCC licenses, but the company believes those won't need to be transferred to AT&T as part of the merger, thus keeping the FCC out of the deal. The report notes that the deal still might not go through even if the FCC won't review the transaction. There's a lot of opposition to it from consumer advocacy groups, and President Donald Trump has said he opposes the deal.
Back to the days of monopolies and kings queens and peasants. ISPs are utilities and should be regulated as such
It's now a toss-up for me as to whether they're still Deathstar Telecom or if they've become something more akin to The Doomsday Machine from classic Trek. Once satisfied to rule the galaxy, AT&T's appetite for acquisition has turned its primary weapon into a gaping maw into which many alternative options for consumers have found themselves trapped.
Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition!
NOOOOooooooooooo!
They both suck maggot filled rotting corpses on their best days.
Less competition will make them go from an F- to a G.
Table-ized A.I.
Are there any good arguments to suggest that these cable/telco mega-mergers are anything but consumer-hostile? I have yet to find one.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
FCC Chairman Says His Agency Won't Review Anything That Might Benefit Consumers (or inconvenience the wealthy).
AFAIK the only FCC license Time Warner holds anymore is for a somewhat also-ran TV station in Atlanta that used to be the great WTBS, but has since been outsourced to the owner of another station there and has no ties to the TBS cable channel anymore. It will probably be sold to the owner of said other station in all likelihood.
I remember when AT&T took over my @Home cable modem service. The prices went way up and the service got really really bad. Back when I had @Home I had 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up (originally 10M up and down). Back then that was still pretty insane. Then AT&T took it over and it became ATTBI. AT&T decided that 1Mbps was too much bandwidth and lowered it to 128Kbps up. On top of that, they aggregated EVERYONE's bandwidth through the same 128Kbps, so now I'm sharing 128Kbps up along with all of my neighbors. At the best of times with ping I only got 40% packet loss. Needless to say, dial-up was a lot faster than my "broadband". It was like this for 9 months. AT&T support consisted of "did you reboot your computer and router and modem?" which, of course, did absolutely nothing. AT&T eventually fixed it, but even newspaper articles describing their crappy service didn't change matters.
Finally Comcast took it over and Comcast was a godsend compared to AT&T. You know things are bad when you praise Comcast. Even Comcast's crappy customer service is orders of magnitude better than what I experienced with AT&T.
I will NEVER use AT&T again. I currently use Comcast business, which, while expensive, is much better than residential.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Approving mergers generally falls under the purview of the FTC (see merger review).
The only reason the FCC came up is due to the fact that the two companies may have had to transfer FCC licenses as part of the deal. Since it appears no transferal is taking place, the FCC is not involved.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
they will probably keep the companies separate legal entities and lease the TWC licenses for some low price
Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum after being acquired by Charter) hasn't been a part of Time Warner since 2009.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The FCC is not the right agency to review mergers for anticompetitive issues. FCC is about tech, not competition.
The relevant agency is the F *T* C (Federal Trade Commission).
Now maybe they need some legislation to give them a budget bump and/or a juristictional tweak/clarification if they're to (once again) take on the telecom giants over antitrust issues. But if so it's high time that was done.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
the tumpanzees will NEVER admit they made a mistake.
as long as they are STIGGINIT to the 'liburals' they are happy.
they could lose their health insurance, be jobless and still think that they 'won'.
we really should have an IQ test for voters. if you aren't at least average, you don't get a vote.
dumb voters are why we are in the shitty state of things. they are so easily manipulated (BUT, HER EMAILS!) and they are entirely the wrong people to decide the future of this country, as a whole.
I truly believe: we are 2 countries and we should split. let the rednecks form redneckia and the rest of us will continue to live in the US.
seriously - we are not one country and perhaps never have been. but its really tearing us apart. how much longer can we continue to fight left vs right, without getting a fucking thing done that helps us?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Have a look at a franchise map and get back to us on that. The New York map is entertaining because there are so many places where one company is permitted to operate on one side of the street, amd another company on the other side of the street. Yes there are several companies in New York, each granted legally enforced monopolies in specific neighborhoods.
This is about the time someone pipes up and says "cities aren't allowed to grant monopolies anymore." Read that law and see what it actually says, or if you're in hurry just go to the New York City web site and look at the map of monopolies enforced by the city. To summarize the law in one sentence:
Cities may not grant brand new legally enforced monopolies - unless they hold a hearing first.
Licensing ham radios, so their broadcasts don't interfere with my UHF stations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The FCC's primary purpose was to make sure your broadcast transmitter was operating correctly. Having them be the keepers of the internet is a stretch IMHO.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
And many US citizens still call Native Americans "Indians" because Christopher Columbus thought he made it to Indo-China. Are you saying we need another regulatory agency to regulate the Internet because the FCC was founded in 1934 and therefor should only regulate technology FDR would be familiar with?
Last I heard Donald Trump was opposed to the AT&T/Timer Warner merger. The FCC is right in saying they don't have jurisdiction here but unless Trump has changed his mind, he should still be able to direct the agencies that DO have jurisdiction on this to block it.
Does anyone get the feeling that Pai & Co. are looking for justifications for not even reviewing deals like this, rather than actually looking for reasons to do their jobs? Maybe it's just me, but I see the FCC and EPA both turning a corner, and making it their mission to protect business interests from regulation rather than to protect citizens from unscrupulous businesses and practices. I hate being the doom and gloom dude, but a lot of things aren't looking so good for us little guys in the near future.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Was Obama forced to appoint Pai?
Yes.
Were Democrats in senate forced to confirm him?
Anyone that wasn't living in a bomb shelter for the previous 6 years knows that the senate was in nominal republican control. If a the democratic party members objected to his appointment, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
the tumpanzees will NEVER admit they made a mistake.
as long as they are STIGGINIT to the 'liburals' they are happy.
they could lose their health insurance, be jobless and still think that they 'won'.
That right there is exactly why this is so hard to stomach -- even when the current administration fails miserably, lies to us, lies about lying to us, claims everyone else is lying, and all of us non-rich folks suffer, the self-proclaimed conservative right will never admit their mistakes and will simply make excuses, and blame The Democrat Party. Hell, Rush Limbaugh still blames Bill Clinton for everything that goes wrong these days. I'm one o' them "liburals"(I say progressive), but I'd much rather have us all be healthy, wealthy, and wise than to be able to say "told ya so." Too bad we're only going to be able to go with the latter in a few years.
Maybe I've been spoiled by eight years of having a thoughtful, intelligent leader. THANKS OBAMA...
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
the tumpanzees will NEVER admit they made a mistake.
as long as they are STIGGINIT to the 'liburals' they are happy.
they could lose their health insurance, be jobless and still think that they 'won'.
we really should have an IQ test for voters. if you aren't at least average, you don't get a vote.
dumb voters are why we are in the shitty state of things. they are so easily manipulated (BUT, HER EMAILS!) and they are entirely the wrong people to decide the future of this country, as a whole.
You do realize that Obama appointed him FCC commissioner in 2012, right?
Both FTC and FCC (and EPA and many others) are getting their budgets slashed.
ORLY? Maybe the others. But the FTC? They hardly have any budget to slash.
I'd like to see where you're getting the idea that the FTC's budget is getting the axe.
For starters, it's an ideal tool to spank the media conglomerates which own and control the news outlets that have roasted him. Much of the anti-consumer pathologies the ISPs engage in appear to be directed to giving the content part of the containing conglomerate's operation a competitive advantage.
Antitrust actions to prevent (i.e. AT&T / Time Warner merger blocking, which Trump already favors) or break up existing content transport / content provision tie-ins would let him drive a big screw into the mainstream media under the guise of (actual!) consumer protection activity. B-)
Note that he's appointed Maureen Ohlhausen to head the FTC, and she'd already written a paper on how the FTC and antitrust, not the FCC and net neutrality, is the proper remedy for any consumer-impacting misbehavior of the ISP oligopoly.
(As have I, though we seem to have a difference of opinion on how many competitors are needed before competition is an effective remedy and how well competition doing at the moment.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think they both are. I think it's correct that the FCC should review mergers when consolidation of significant amounts of licensed spectrum or other assets that fall under the purview of the FCC. And I think the FTC should review mergers based on the impact from a trade and consumer point of view.
RTFA: "The communications giant noted that it "anticipated that Time Warner will not need to transfer any of its FCC licenses "
The job of the FCC is to "..regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states..."
It is a lot more than just tech. Ass-hole.
To trolls that don't understand the mission of the FCC.
Wow, blame Trump for something he opposes...you sound listen to yourself.
ISPs routinely have their puppets in govermment shoot down notions like municipal wifi in poor inner city areas as to guarantee that they will see no public competition to their price-gouging. They also deliberately create a checkerboard of no competition as the aftermath to their mergers. To simply blame our awful broadband situation on cities alone is childish.
To SAVE an American icon company that MEANS America to more than one generation and should HAVE the capability to become an eternal, efficient company? I would send such Indian to martial court. I grew up on W cartoons! Now how is it going to be called? Other companies restructure, but if their name is iconic, they get sold and changed instead.