Public-Interest Groups Lobby Clyburn Staff for AT&T/DirecTV Conditions
Free Press, New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge again urged the FCC to impose various requirements on AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV as conditions for approving the deal, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 14-90…
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of a meeting their representatives had with staffers for Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The groups' advocates repeated concerns about the "transaction’s impact on consumers and competition in the broadband and pay-TV markets -- particularly AT&T’s increased incentives to discriminate against over-the-top ('OTT') video marketplace rivals to AT&T’s legacy video services." While the groups believe the deal should be blocked, they urged the FCC to impose conditions in numerous areas: stand-alone broadband, net neutrality, interconnection and zero-rating of video services for data cap purposes. They also said the FCC should (1) be skeptical of -- and verify -- AT&T/DirecTV claims that the deal would deliver public-interest benefits, (2) ensure the deal does no harm to the agency's IP transition efforts and (3) require AT&T to maintain existing DirecTV video service tiers and pricing plans for seven years in order to address horizontal concentration in the multichannel video programming distribution market. AT&T recently filed a lengthy response disputing the arguments of public-interest groups and others seeking conditions on interconnection, data caps and other issues (see 1505270049).