WoW! Says Whoah: Pitches Strong Comcast/NBCU Conditions

Colleen Abdoulah, president of cable/ISP WOW!, plans to tell the House Communications & Internet Subcommittee that the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department will likely need to put serious conditions on the Comcast/NBCU merger to prevent it from "beating the system" and engaging in anticompetitive conduct.

Speaking for the American Cable Association as well as her own company, Abdoulah argues that the current program access rules are essentially a "right without a remedy," and that the government must consider structural relief--like forced divestitures--in addition to as various "behavioral" remedies. She says that rather than being a primarily vertical deal, as the companies argue, it "greatly increases" horizontal concentration by combining "key content and distribution assets" of the two.