Union asks FCC to delay decision on $3.6 Billion Verizon spectrum deal

The Communications Workers of America, the largest union for telecommunications workers, wants the Federal Communications Commission to delay a final decision on whether Verizon can buy $3.6 billion in spectrum from a consortium of cable companies.

CWA says Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox have not provided meaningful details of their transaction. “Verizon Wireless and Big Cable are trying to keep their deal wrapped in secrecy behind closed doors,” said Debbie Goldman, telecommunications policy director for the CWA. “The FCC should ‘stop the clock’ on its review and insist on a full public review of this proposed deal.”

The union says the companies are obstructing a meaningful review of the deal in a number of ways; the companies have:

• provided documents about the deal that include large redacted segments,
• delivered materials in unreadable file formats,
• hidden data behind proprietary file formats, and
• buried the necessary information in an avalanche of “hundreds of thousands of documents.”