The Silver Ink

Sunday, March 7, 2021
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Comcast likely to drop plans to merge with Time Warner amid fed hurdle

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Reports are abuzz that American cable provider Comcast is likely to call off its USD 45 billion acquisition attempt to buy rival Time Warner Cable amid the recent reports that both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the US Department of Justice are preparing to turn against the billion dollar agreement after spending months while looking into what the proposed merger would mean for competition in the country’s cable market.

The decision has apparently come after the company witnessed an increased scrutiny and stiff opposition from the federal regulators, forcing it to walk away from the proposed merger that would have resulted in the combination of the country’s top two cable operators.

According to the sources, the company has still not revealed its mind over the cancellation of the deal and an official announcement in this regard could arrive as early as tomorrow.

Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable had formally announced about their merger plans in February last year. The shareholders of both Comcast and Time Warner Cable had signed off on the idea last October. But the companies met a huge hurdle of regulatory approval.

Comcast has taken out public campaigns in favor of the acquisition deal for over a year now. However, the merger proposal has witnessed a fierce opposition from the rival firms and critics, who are warning that a Comcast-Time Warner Cable combination would control 40 percent of the broadband market of the United States. Moreover, they also believe that the merger will lay claim to a drastic hold in the share of the cable market.

The FCC has yet to take decision over the deal that whether it is in the public interest. Also, the US Justice Department will be ruling that the merger does not harm competition in the cable market.

AT&T to pay FCC USD 25 million fine to settle customer data breach

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday asked wireless carrier AT&T Inc to pay a whopping amount of USD 25 million in order to settle the case over a consumer data breach at its call centers in Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines.

According to the US communications regulator, the user data breaches led to the unauthorized revelation of names and partial or full numbers related to Social Security and also illegal access to personal account information of nearly 280,000 AT&T customers in the United States. The data were breached between 2013 and 2014.

“Unfortunately, a few of our vendors did not meet that standard and we are terminating vendor sites as appropriate. We’ve changed our policies and strengthened our operations,” AT&T said in a statement.

A senior FCC official told reporters that the data was used by call center staffs for requesting handset-unlock codes for the AT&T phones and shared with third parties, who appeared to have been trafficking the cell phones that were stolen.

According to the FCC official, the civil penalty worth USD 25 million that has been levied on the number two wireless carrier of the United States is the largest data security enforcement action to date by the federal regulatory body.

In October 2014, the federal body had imposed a fine worth USD 10 million on telecom firms, including YourTel and TerraCom, for consumer privacy breaches.

FCC’s Tom Wheeler: Net rules will defeat Court challenges

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Tom-WheelerFederal Communications Commission’s chairman Tom Wheeler is confident that the net neutrality rules the agency passed last month will withstand the challenges in court.

He said this on Friday speaking at the Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law.

The net neutrality or the open internet gives FCC authority to prevent Internet Service Providers or ISP from blocking or degrading the speed of internet, and making paid agreements with internet content companies for fast lanes.

Last year the federal court rejected the open internet rules saying that, “you’re trying to impose common carrier-like regulation without stepping up and saying, ‘these are common carriers’.”

Wheeler said, “We have addressed that issue … That gives me great confidence going forward that we will prevail.”

The telecom companies like USTelecom and the Alamo Broadband filed separate suits claiming that the agency has acted beyond its authority.

He said, “The big winners will be America’s consumers and innovators and our economy as a whole, we will finally have strong, enforceable rules that assure that Internet remains open now, and into the future.”

He said, “The Commission’s Open Internet Order rests on a basic choice â?? Whether those who build the networks should make the rules by themselves or whether there should be a basic set of rules and a referee on the field to throw the flag if they are violated.”

Two broadband firms challenges FCC over net neutrality rules in lawsuit

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In less than two weeks after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced its new rules for net neutrality, American broadband providing companies have filed lawsuits against the regulatory body in an attempt to overturn the recently passed regulations for monitoring Internet traffic.

Industry trade group USTelecom Association and Internet service provider Alamo Broadband challenged the new set of net neutrality rules in different lawsuits against FCC.

USTelecom Association, the trade group representing some of the country’s largest Internet service providers, on Monday filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, claiming that the actions of the federal regulatory body is a violation of federal commandment and also “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”

Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom, in a statement said, “We do not believe the Federal Communications Commission’s move to utility-style regulation invoking Title II authority is legally sustainable.”

Making similar arguments, Texas-based Alamo on Monday challenged the FCC’s action in a federal appeals court in New Orleans.

Both the cases are the first legal moves taken by the Internet-based companies against the new rules for net neutrality, which were approved by a 3-2 vote in February after a long term debate.

The newly passed rules forbid broadband service providers from slowing down or blocking Internet traffic on wired and wireless networks. The rules also ban ISPs from providing paid priority services that could enable them to charge content firms, like Netflix, fees to access “Internet fast lanes” to reach consumers more instantly when networks are congested.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson of FCC termed the lawsuits “premature and subject to dismissal”.

 

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