14 years ago, DOJ said letting one broadband company run half the country was a bad idea

In 2000, the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of AT&T and MediaOne.

You may not remember MediaOne, but back in 2000 it was one of the biggest Internet providers around. Comcast had initially planned to buy it before being outmaneuvered at the last minute by AT&T, which submitted a higher bid. A merger would've given AT&T control not only over MediaOne's operations, but also part ownership in Road Runner -- and together with its stake in Excite@Home, AT&T would've controlled an estimated 40 percent of the country's access to broadband. The Justice Department believed that if AT&T-MediaOne went through, AT&T's newfound position as a gatekeeper would let it dictate outcomes across a national market for broadband. While regulators have been wary of gatekeeping for decades, this marked the first time that the concept had been raised in the Internet industry, policy analysts say. What does this have to do with the Comcast merger? According to Netflix, Dish and others, regulators currently face a similar situation where you have two major Internet service providers who don't compete against each other in local markets, but whose combination would create an entity that would be similarly empowered to dictate outcomes across a range of other industries nationally.