Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ACQUISITIONS & MERGERS NEWS: FCC seeks information from DirecTV in Comcast-TWC review, (Jan 5, 2015)
Organizations Mentioned:AT&T/DIRECTV
By Lynn Stanton,TR Daily
The FCC has asked DirecTV for details of its delivery of programming over subscribers’ Internet connections and its interconnection arrangements with Internet service providers (ISPs), as part of the agency’s review of Comcast Corp.’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Inc.
In a December 31 letter, FCC Wireline Competition Bureau Chief Julie Veach said that to complete the WC docket 14-57 transaction review, the FCC needs “information and data from other commercial wireline carriers against which the applicants compete.” She asked for a response by Jan. 31 and said that the response would be treated as confidential.
Among the FCC’s specific requests were the amounts DirecTV paid to each ISP with which it has a paid peering arrangement, the interconnection capacity available with ISPs with whom it has settlement-free peering arrangements, and “documents that discuss the actual or potential effects on the Company’s VOD and TVE services from the introduction of data caps, usage based billing plans or other methods used by an ISP to measure its subscribers’ broadband usage, and the Company’s strategies and policies in response to such practices.”
It also asked for “documents that discuss video ‘cord-cutting,’ ‘cord-shaving’ and ‘cord-nevers’ by consumers and their effect on the Company’s VOD and TVE services.”
It asked about difficulties DirecTV has encountered in obtaining programming that it has “reason to believe was related to a provision in another video programming provider’s agreement with another MVPD or OVD.”
News: AcquisitionsMergers