Verizon/SpectrumCo: What a Tangled Web It's Weaved

[Commentary] Public Knowledge and some of our friends [including the Benton Foundation] filed reply comments to Verizon Wireless and the cable companies’ opposition to our petition to deny the proposed spectrum transfer and its accompanying agreements.

While we believe the transactions will harm competition and consumer choice, what has emerged from the debate is how the agency, resale, and joint operating entity (JOE) agreements fit into the spectrum transfer. Verizon and the cable companies want us to believe that the agency, resale, and JOE agreements are separate from the proposed spectrum transfer. But David Cohen, Executive Vice President of cable company Comcast, admits that “[t]he transaction is an integrated transaction. There was never any discussion about selling the spectrum without having the commercial agreements.” The truth is that the agreements are intimately entwined with, and contingent on, SpectrumCo’s proposed license transfer. Because of this tangled web, the FCC needs to include the agreements in its review of the proposed license transfer as it considers all the harms to the public interest that could arise from the transaction, even if it reviews the agreements in a separate proceeding and even if the DOJ concurrently reviews the agreements for antitrust violations.