Time

[Commentary] AT&T executives think their plan to take over Time Warner is too big to fail. But the proposed merger’s astronomical cost may prove them wrong. For the deal to go through, AT&T and Time Warner need the approval of government regulators, especially those at the Department of Justice, who will vet it to see if it violates antitrust laws. But there’s another metric by which regulators should evaluate the merger: its impact on real people, especially low-income households and communities of color.

AT&T will need to regularly pay interest to service its massive debt. The telecommunications giant doesn’t print cash; it bills customers. In other words, to pay down its interest, AT&T will have to hike prices. Higher prices would put Internet access further out of reach of the more than 30 million adults in this country stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. According to US Census data, this gap is most pronounced in African-American and Hispanic communities. People already suffering from generations of systemic racism are disadvantaged further by lack of access to the educational and work opportunities that are at the fingertips of those with high-speed connections. For the enormous amount of money AT&T is shelling out to acquire Time Warner, it could run super-fast gigabit-fiber Internet services to every single home in America. There’s no doubt that this mega-merger doesn’t benefit ordinary Americans. People want reliable, cheap and fast connections to the open Internet. We also need a choice of providers, not a few bloated companies controlling access to both the Internet and the content that flows across it. The merger of AT&T and Time Warner is just too big and costly to accomplish that. For that reason, it must be blocked.

[Tim Karr is the senior director of strategy for Free Press]

[Commentary] Communications providers who offer access to the Internet in our homes and on our phones have found a way to evade accountability by effectively locking the courtroom doors on their customers. They do it through the use of what are known as mandatory arbitration clauses, buried deep in the fine print of the contracts you have to sign in order to get Internet service. These clauses force you to sign away your right to go to court in the event of a dispute, in favor of a private arbitration process that is inherently biased towards corporations and offers no meaningful appeals process.

In an age where reliable and affordable Internet access is an absolute necessity, we believe that you shouldn’t have to give up your day in court to go online, either. That’s why we’re teaming up to try to eliminate mandatory arbitration clauses in telecom contracts. But whether it’s in the Senate (where Al has authored legislation that would ban these clauses) or at the Federal Communications Commission (where Mignon is leading the charge for a regulatory crackdown this month), your voice matters in this fight. After all, these are your rights at stake. If the issue of mandatory arbitration remains just another little-known way for corporations to take advantage of the little guy, it’ll be impossible to stop them. But if we raise awareness about this quiet threat to our rights and raise our voices in support of eliminating this unfair practice once and for all, we can strike a blow for justice and protect every American who goes online—which is pretty much all of us.

A Q&A with Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Chairwoman Ramirez is currently suing two of Seattle’s biggest tech companies: Amazon, for allegedly making it too easy for kids to rack up in-app purchases on their parents’ Kindles, and T-Mobile, for allegedly cramming unwanted charges into customers’ phone bills.

Chairman Ramirez has taken a laser focus to the activities of tech companies, particularly in regards to mobile. The new FTC head talked about the hidden permissions lurking in terms of service agreements, Facebook’s controversial mood study and whether Americans should ever expect a “right to be forgotten” online.

A Q&A with Aneesh Chopra, President Barack Obama’s former chief technology officer. Chopra says the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rules on net neutrality are in line with what the White House supported in 2010.

Chopra says that the critique from open Internet advocates misunderstands the problem. The point of the net neutrality rules is not to ban companies from purchasing access to faster, better service, he said; the point of the rules is to ensure that managed service agreements happen above board.

“In my personal opinion, the provision of managed services is not inconsistent with the principles of an open Internet, provided there is a robust level of oversight ensuring that we are not degrading the Internet service offerings for the rest of us,” he said. “You can’t just say, ‘Go forth and build managed services, good luck.’ You’ve got to have a robust review cycle to make sure that they are living up to standards.”

During the Q&A, Chopra touted the need for managed network services for telemedicine. However, he added that rules still need to be in place to the protect the consumer. Overall, he says he fully supports the President’s position on net neutrality and his vision of an open Internet.

One of the biggest Internet backbone companies in the world, Level 3, claimed that five of the major American consumer broadband providers have been abusing their near-monopoly access to American homes and offices to pad their profits, raise consumer costs and delay enhancements to the high speed lines.

The charge comes just as Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are considering a merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable that would make the new company the largest broadband provider in the country.

The big broadband providers “are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers,” writes Mark Taylor, Level 3′s VP of Content and Media, who argued that their near-monopoly in local markets was the main factor allowing them to get away with it. “They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content.”

In recent months, Taylor says that the big American commercial broadband providers have refused to share the cost of widening the important choke points that connect them to the global internetwork. Those so-called peering connections have become congested as more and more people use the Internet for things like streaming HD video.

Comcast’s proposed $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable won’t violate US antitrust laws or federal public interest rules, a senior Comcast executive said.

On the contrary, a merger between the two largest cable companies in the country will be great for consumers, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said. Cohen made his comments as opposition to the deal continues to grow from public interest groups, lawmakers, and industry observers. Critics of the deal say the merger would concentrate too much market power in the hands of a single media and entertainment behemoth, potentially leading to higher prices for consumers. Comcast dismisses such fears and insists that the merger will result in better service for consumers.

Cohen acknowledges that the deal’s implications for the broadband market are “appropriate to think about and discuss,” but argues that it’s “not a very scary story,” due to increasing competition from wireless broadband. “I think it’s indisputable today that wireless is certainly beginning to be an effective competitor and substitute for at least many uses of broadband,” Cohen said.

Comcast argues that bigger is better. “Sometimes big is a bad thing,” said Cohen. “I acknowledge that. But sometimes big is really important, really necessary and really good. And that would tend to be in high capital expenditure industries, in industries where innovation is fast moving and where you need a lot of investment in R&D and innovation to keep pace. And that is our industry.” He added: “The rationale for this transaction is all about scale. We are going to get bigger.”