David Cohen

Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) tore into Facebook, calling the company’s stated attitudes on regulation a sham. “What we are hearing from Facebook is platitudes and bromides," Blumenthal stated. "When it says it wants regulation, at the same time it is fighting that regulation tooth and nail, day and night, with armies of lawyers, millions of dollars in lobbying.

[Commentary] For several years, Kansas City has been at the forefront of a movement in the Midwest. The region was an early leader of the Silicon Prairie, showing firsthand that a thriving startup ecosystem is not the exclusive purview of the coasts. But federal regulators are about to hurt the open internet and put this growth at risk. These startups’ successes are dependent on an open internet. The rise of digital technologies has eroded boundaries: Anyone can participate, start a business and reach a global audience. Thanks to the way the internet was designed, it’s one of the most open, competitive markets we’ve ever known. Consumers can reach any site they want, without interference from the big telecom and wireless companies that provide access to the internet. This is often called “net neutrality.” But many of the incumbent internet access providers have long wanted to change the way the internet works. This sort of behavior has been kept in check because of net neutrality rules enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, but new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai plans to do away with the existing legal protections. Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market. They could impede traffic from startups’ services in order to favor their own services or established competitors. They could also impose new fees on startups, inhibiting consumer choice.

[David Cohen is the founder and co-CEO of Techstars and a serial entrepreneur.]

On July 15, the Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Julián Castro, and I announced a significant, national effort to help close the digital divide for low-income Americans. Now, public housing and HUD-assisted residents who live in Comcast’s service area will be eligible to apply for Internet Essentials, the company’s acclaimed, high-speed Internet adoption program for low-income families.

Including homes covered by Comcast’s public housing expansion pilot announced in March, an estimated total of up to 2 million HUD-assisted homes, including Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher, and Multifamily programs, will now have access to low-cost Internet service. According to HUD, this number is also more than 40 percent of all HUD-assisted households nationwide. The announcement is an official policy change that marks the first time in the history of the program, outside of some pilot markets, that adults without a child eligible for the National School Lunch Program will be eligible to apply for Internet Essentials. This means veterans living in HUD-assisted homes who are transitioning from combat into the workforce will now be able to sign up for low-cost Internet, so they can use it to search and apply for jobs. It means senior citizens will be able to access the Internet from the comfort of their HUD-assisted homes to do the things many of us often take for granted, such as sharing photos with loved ones, communicating via video chat, paying bills, and following the news. Finally, it means adults without children living in HUD-assisted homes can get online and access a wide range of opportunities, from accessing educational resources to healthcare information.

Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable will bring numerous public interest benefits to millions of residential and commercial customers, from faster Internet speeds and greater programming diversity, to next-generation TV, more robust Wi-Fi, more advertising choices and competition, low-cost Internet through our acclaimed Internet Essentials program, and the ability to better serve business customers big and small with innovative products and services tailored to their needs.

We believe this is an approvable transaction and we expect to agree with regulators on conditions that will further enhance the public interest while not being unduly burdensome on our business or consumers.

We are gratified by the outpouring of thoughtful and positive comments from a wide range of supporters of the transaction that have already been submitted for the record, more than 200 already, including business development and community organizations, diversity groups, advertisers, programmers, schools and universities, policy makers, and other prominent individuals that this transaction is pro-consumer, pro-competitive, and strongly in the public interest.

Facebook is extending its deadline to close its acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp by one year, to Aug 19, 2015. The original deadline was Aug 19, 2014.

If the transaction is not finalized by Aug 19, 2015, Facebook must pay a $1 billion termination fee to WhatsApp and issue the company the equivalent of $1 billion worth of class-A shares of Facebook common stock. Things are not moving as smoothly overseas at it did with the Federal Trade Commission’s conditioned approval in April.

Facebook requested in May that the European Commission review the deal, hoping to avoid antitrust investigations by several individual countries in the European Union. The EC investigation is still ongoing.